Hunting Stories: How I Became the Dog

Bandera, Texas (The Kyle Ranch)

**People hunt and fish so that they have good stories to tell around the cave, campfire, or dining room table—besides all the other reasons people hunt and fish (see the little star things at the beginning of this sentence.)

I love the hunting and the fishing for the stories.

First, I want to say that hunting is hard. Contrary to the perception perpetuated by people who eat chickens and cows clonked on the head by other people, hunting is like finding a needle in a giant wilderness and shooting at it while the needle turns invisible. Animals are slicker than an eel’s fanny at getting away.

Second, hunting is hard. I had no idea how hard it was. On a recent hunting trip to Kyle Ranch (a little slice of Texas heaven) I was left breathless at how challenging it can be to shoot invisible needle-like animals. Literally, breathless.

As our guide drove us over, up, down, and through thousands of acres of bouncing Texas hill country looking for ground venison, I found myself in the backseat of the pickup truck. The pickup bristled with weapons. My husband rode “shotgun” with a rifle. I hung my head out of the backseat window. As every jouncing mile passed, my adrenalin ratcheted up. My soaring excitement might have been visible from space. 

I sniffed the wind. The smell of Texas cedar filled my bloodstream. My head swiveled as I scanned the heavy underbrush. I quit blinking. I started to pant. My thundering heart threatened to crack ribs. Blood pounded in my head.

Then I saw it. It was a giant, staring, frozen whitetail deer not hiding, completely visible, looking at me. I went on point, stuck my finger out of the window, and in a normal sort of voice (neither loud nor soft) I said, “Right there.”

She bounded away before I could say a bad word, which I did say—loudly.

She bounded away like a wild animal confident that she was 1) not the kind we were looking for 2) faster than a speeding bullet, and 3) able to become a see-through needle any old time she wanted.

My husband turned around, reached out, patted me on the head, and said, “Good eyes. Good eyes.”

That’s when I realized that I’d become the dog.

And that’s my first hunting story.

Linda (What a good girl!) Zern
          


**People also hunt and fish to match wits with animals who are able to hide behind branches the size of matchsticks, to provide lean chemical free meat for their families, and to earn their supper the old fashioned way by stealth and skill rather than clonking.

The Droopy Truth - A Classic ZippitZern

My husband (Sherwood Kevin—they called him Sherwood not Kevin—go figure) and I have racked up a fairly impressive list of most embarrassing moments over the past thirty plus years of marriage.

There was the time Sherwood ran out of gas in the drive-through of McDonald’s where he had to push the car up to the “pick-up” window. Then there was the knee surgery/Sodium Pentothal fiasco when Sherwood had a little trouble coming “out of it” and told the Nazis’ (i.e. nurses) in the recovery room that he had four wives and thirty-seven children and a really HUGE . . . um . . . REASON for all those wives. Talk about “Big Love.” Then there was the bubble gum on the hairy buttocks incident—also Sherwood.

He’s racked up a fairly impressive list of embarrassing moments. But remember I haven’t even begun to discuss the reams of charming, noxious, embarrassing moments involving various body fluids erupting in public places from our children during the “four kids, six and under” years.

The mistake is to assume that once the children are potty trained and the hubby’s knee rehab is over, that the humiliation is finally over. You know, the embarrassment of being alive and breathing in various gases which produce still other gases—when mixed with, oh say—a Coney Island hotdog. If anything, the relentless march of age just makes for a lot of fun opportunities to be total bags of gas and droopy body parts.

Now, “most embarrassing” is almost a competition, and I’m thinking that I might have taken the lead.

From a recent phone call confessional:

“Boy, did I have an embarrassing moment today at work,” my husband began.

Not shocked, I asked, “Oh good grief now what?”

“Well, I got up from my desk to greet some co-workers, and when I stood up I just let fly with a giant . . .”

Cutting him off, I yelped, “What!?”

“You know.”

“No, what? You let fly with a groan, a moan, a sigh . . . what?” I paused and embraced the dawning truth. With slow drip horror, I said, “You. Did. Not!”

“Yep! Right there in my cubicle.”

“Did anyone say anything?”

“Nope. But their faces said it all; it was so embarrassing.”

Silence descended over our conversation like a helium balloon filled with methane.

“Well,” I said, “I think I’ve got you beat.”

“I don’t know; that was pretty embarrassing. I’d never met those people before.” Skepticism mixed with humiliation in his voice.

“I’m telling you; I’ve got you beat.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“You know how on Mondays I clean house in my big old sweatshirt, and I don’t wear . . . you know, anything . . .”

“Rubber gloves?”

“No! I don’t wear, you know . . . foundation.” (Foundation is a Southern word for bra. It’s a cultural thing.)

“And you’re not talking about makeup.”

“Right.”

“So, I had some stuff I needed to put in one of those plastic snap Rubbermaid totes, you know those plastic storage buck-ity things with the lids that I buy by the truckload from WalMart?”

“Yes.” It was a worried “yes.”

“Okay, so after I shoved the junk into the plastic thing and I went to snap the lid closed,” I said, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, “I snapped the end of my . . . self in the lid.”

Silence.

“You mean, the part not wearing foundation,” he said.

“Roger that,” I sighed. “But the worst part is that the plastic lid was closer to my waist than my chin when I snapped my . . . self into it.”

“Wow, bummer. Okay, you win. You now hold the most embarrassing moment prize.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. Thank Mother Nature.”

And so it droops; I mean goes, and so it goes. I’ve never been one to herald “the dignity of man” much, because I’ve never found any part of living to be very dignified. Mostly it’s just people pretending that nothing disgusting ever comes out of their noses or other orifices—ever. But it does, and we all know it. Not only does disgusting stuff come out of us all the time, sometimes it lingers in the air and wafts over into the cubicle next to you.

So here’s hoping that this week finds you downwind and your droopy bits safe from snappy plastic lids.

Note:  If you find these references too obscure please email me, and I’ll be happy to tell you that Sherwood farted in front of some clients he had never met, and I snapped my nipple into a Rubbermaid storage container.

Linda (Flopsy) Zern

Crimes Against My Humanity

Moon n 1. The natural satellite of the earth, 5. Any disk, globe, or crescent resembling the moon. (Let’s fly to the moon.)

To Moon v 1. The act of smashing your pimply nether regions against the glass of the window of a quickly moving vehicle, on the turnpike. (Mom, that idiot just mooned us; speed up so we can get his license plate number and report him to the authorities.)

Moonstruck n 1. Believing the authorities care.

My daughters and I were assaulted on the turnpike. Do you want the facts of the assault or the resulting trauma?

By the way, the word “assault” means roughly “vulgar things that happen to you without your permission,” or in the Vulgar Latin it means vulgar people without their pants on.

Okay, the facts of the assault. On first glance we were a pretty cute group: Heather was 8.10 months pregnant, Maren was newly engaged, and I had wrinkles older than the combined ages of the assaulters. Whatever the reason, we were picked out of the never-ending stream of turnpike traffic.

Heather recognized that we were being followed by a van full of lunatics (get it—lunatics, lunar, moon) when she said, “Mom, get away from this jerk; he’s about to run us off the road.”

Looking back I noticed we were being followed by a van with its lights on. I could tell the lights were on because they were shining inside my trunk.

“What a lunatic,” I muttered through grinding teeth.

I slowed down so that the lunatic could pass me and get on with his very important life. The lunatic slowed down.

“Mom, switch lanes; he’s not going around,” Maren said, shooting the lunatic dirty looks through the rear window of the car. Her hands were clenched around an imaginary neck. I switched lanes.

He switched lanes.

This disturbed me so much that I tried to shoot him the evil eye through my rear-view window, which caused me to lose focus on the semi-tractor trailer in front of us. I stomped on the brakes. Lunatic boy stomped on his brakes. I changed lanes. He changed lanes. I slowed down. He slowed down. I almost ran off the road. He laughed. I wished for super hero powers like laser beam eyes.

Maren sighed, “Oh good, he’s finally passing.” She sank back into her seat, closing her eyes, exhausted.

Then without warning, Heather screamed, “Oh no, no, no!” She flung her hands up to shield her face. “An enormous, hairy, pimply a**.” Then she clutched her swollen abdomen as if to protect the innocent child within.

I looked at her face and what I saw there will go with me to the grave. The horror! The horror! Well, that and the fact that I’d never heard Heather use the “A” word—ever. It was pretty shocking.

Maren yelled, “Speed up! Let’s catch them. We’ll take pictures of them with our camera phones.”

“And then what? Make posters!” I held the steering wheel steady. “No, face it girls, we were mooned.”

I paused for effect and then said, “You know they could be a van full of sex slavers trying to crash us, steal us, and sell us.”

They both rolled their eyes.

“Let’s go to the mall,” I said.

“To the mall,” Maren chirped.

“To the mall,” Heather moaned.

To the mall,” I concurred.

And away we went to the mall. But be warned, somewhere out there is a van full of sex slavers looking to crash, steal, and sell a likely looking car full of girl types, or just a van full of bored college kids trying to impress each other with their bare-bottomed daring and dash. Either way, they’re lunatics.

Linda (Green Cheese) Zern

  

BOOK OF ZERN - YET ANOTHER CHAPTER

1.     Behold, we doth still tarry in the land of three sides and speak of our travails and triumphs there. In the year in which the Mayans spoke of as “the end of all things,” we doth still prosper, in that our numbers increased and our joy groweth strong.

2       And the begats consisted of both a new grand boy, which was called Griffen, and a new grand girl, which was called Hero. And thus were the numbers of our rising generation brought to nine.

3        And thus we did continue to party much with singing and with dancing and with glow sticks and with the playing of the vinyl records which I, even the YaYa, doth keep and preserve. And the rising generation doth enjoy both “Marching Band Music” and “The Beatles.”

4       Wo unto Poppy, who didst proclaim that the partying had grown too great, for we didst ignore him in his wo, and we didst dance about him while singing “Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang.”

5       And Poppy did ride forth on his horse, Miss Kitty, to practice much with the volunteer mounted posse, so that he might sally forth to apprehend those that did wickedly at “The Loop,” a place of much buying and selling and movie watching and petty theft.

6       And I, even the keeper of the records of my people, did accidently becometh a senior at Rollins College, in the land known as Winter Park. And many were astonished.

7       Even Aric, the eldest, did becometh engaged to one Lauren of Saint Cloud and there was rejoicing and thanks given.

8       In this selfsame year of 2012, Heather and Phillip didst begat Griffen, the last boy of four, in addition to Zoe. And Zoe didst weep when told that she wouldest have yet another brother.

9       In the same way, Maren and T. J. didst bring forth Hero, their second of two daughters, and they didst open a business on Fairbanks which they calleth “The Salon” and they didst become a small business and they didst “build that” themselves, yea after they were blessed by one who is called “rich.”

10    And the youngest of our offspring, even Adam, and his goodly wife Sarah waited with thanksgiving for the third of three daughters to be born unto them. And Emma didst rejoice in a sister in that she didst believe that a brother wouldest be a lot of trouble and wouldest want “to wrestle her up” like unto Zoe’s brothers who didst “wrestle up” all they saw.

11    And thus ended the twelfth year of the twenty-first century and we grew strong in the land of the three sides and we believed that our God did go before us as a pillar of fire, leading us in the way of truth and happiness.    

EXPLAIN AWAY

My husband was in Bahrain. I was at home in Saint Cloud. I was attempting to explain to him, yet again, the nightmarish challenge of being me; I was attempting my explanation through the miracle of a long distance cell phone connection.

“No, no, it’s the television in the bedroom that doesn’t work now.”

“What happened?” he asked.

I could almost see him running his hand through his hair. It’s the gesture my husband makes when he wishes he could turn himself into a earless deep sea squid so he doesn’t have to listen to me.

“I told you. I had to take the VCR from the television in the bedroom and hook it up to the TV on the porch so I can exercise out on the porch and now the television in the bedroom doesn’t work anymore.”

“What VCR? We don’t have a VCR.”

Now that he mentioned it, VCR did sound kind of wrong. I crumpled my eyebrows together and came up with a better name.

“Not VCR then. That machine. You know that movie machine.”

“DVD player?” he offered.

“Okay, whatever.”

“And why did you have to unhook the DVD player inside the house?”

I made a rude noise. “Ugh! I told you! Because the channel changer thingy for the movie machine on the porch is lost and I can’t scroll through my exercise tape so I can’t work out and keep my stupid girlish figure so you won’t leave me for an idiot baby bimbo.”

“Tape?” he asked, feeling his way through my mouse maze of thinking. “We . . . we don’t still have . . . tapes? Do we?”

I switched my cell phone from one sweaty ear to the other sweaty ear.

“Okay, fine, not tapes. Whatever those roundish little record looking things are. Good grief. Try to keep up.”

“DVD’s?”

“Yes. That’s it. I had to unhook the DVD player from the television in the bedroom and hook it up to that hunk of junk television on the porch and now I can’t make the television in the bedroom work because there are a thousand wires going to a million kinds of nowhere. Arrrgggghh.”

“Why can’t you exercise in the bedroom?”

“What? Are you kidding me?  I told you why” I said, thinking that I was pretty sure that I had told him why I couldn’t exercise in the bedroom, probably, maybe  . . . “because the rug scoots when I do jumping jacks and the tile hurts my knees. You know my knees, the knees with the burning in the bone parts knees? Who cares? I want to exercise on the porch. That’s why.”

Then he said that thing that makes me wish that I were a Killer Whale playing with my food by tossing it into the air on the Discovery channel.

“Linda, is the TV plugged in?”

I couldn’t answer him because various teeth were colliding up against each other.

He kept right on going. “Why did you unhook the DVD player again?”

“Because if I don’t exercise soon I will break someone.”

“Don’t you mean something?”

“No.”

Long distance phone calls are tricky. Long distance explanations are challenging. But sometimes, long distances are your best bet when building a happy and healthy marriage.

Linda (High Impact) Zern

  

A DOG'S TAIL

When you hear yourself screaming, “Sherwood, grab the hose; the dog is on fire,” you know that you are—once again—the butt of some giant cosmic joke, not to mention the dog.

We are country folk. We sit outside a lot.  We make fires. We own dogs. We sit outside around fires with our dogs. It’s a lifestyle. You have to respect it.  (If we sat outside naked, beating tom-toms while reciting cowboy poetry with our dogs you’d have to respect that too—if it’s a lifestyle. That’s what I have learned in college.)

I am a lazy fire pit builder. I like to hearken back to my Native American heritage by slapping a random length of wood onto the fire, letting the ends hang over the sides. When the log burns in half, you shove the ends in. Easy. Peasy. Others in my family would rather court hernias by slapping logs against trees, whacking branches on the ground, or slamming hunks of solid wood over their knees to try to produce the “correct” size.  Mostly, they just look like learning disabled Sasquatches. It’s fun to watch.

The down side to my method of fire building is that blazing hunks of junk sometimes fall out of the fire pit, raining down like space junk re-entering the atmosphere.

Sometimes blazing hunks of junk fall into the dog’s tail. No, not sometimes—once, it happened once.

What I learned when the dog’s tail caught on fire: I have the reaction time of a Navy Seal, Sarah (my daughter-in-law) who is very pregnant does not have the reaction time of a Navy Seal, and my husband is . . . a learning disabled Sasquatch.

CoCo, my very hairy collie/retriever mix, had cuddled up to the fire pit when a blazing bit of junk fell out of the fire pit into her very hairy tail bits. Her tail fluff began to smoke. She was oblivious. I leapt out of my chair and screamed, “The dog is on fire.”

Sarah screamed and tried not to wet her pants. Sherwood continued playing ‘Angry Birds’ on his machine. The dog’s tail blazed up.

Reacting like a Ninja taking vitamin-B 12, I started to kick sand onto the dog’s tail.  I continued screaming, “Sherwood get the hose the dog is on fire.”

CoCo remained oblivious. She may have been playing ‘Angry Birds’ in her head.

A smell straight from Dante’s Inferno rolled over me. Coughing bitter coughs, I started to stomp on the dog’s tail.  She lifted her head, confused.

Sarah continued screaming and doing Kegel exercises.

I stomped on the dog until a giant chunk of frizzled and singed tail fuzz fell out of her tail. She got up, walked to the opposite side of the fire pit, flopped into the sand, and fell asleep—probably wondering when I’d had my stroke.

Sherwood looked up from his machine, annoyed that I was yelling at him.

“What did you want me to do about it?” he said.

I thought about becoming an angry bird and pecking him to death. I threw more wood into the fire pit instead. CoCo snored. Sarah tried to catch her breath. Our lifestyle continued.

And you have to respect that or be labeled a judgmental, diversity hating, cowboy poetry bigot.

Linda (Fire Retardant) Zern

 

   

Eye of the Bird

Sandhill Cranes are big, tall birds. Some of them are big enough to look me in the eye—almost. They have a wingspan of almost seven feet across. Having them hang out in one’s yard is close to being in an episode of “Animals are Better than People” on the National Geographic channel. (Note: There’s no such show on the National Geographic channel, so don’t look for it.)

In the spring Sandhill Cranes have a funky sex dance they do that resembles teenagers dancing at a high school homecoming. It’s delightful.

Sandhill Cranes are way cool. Except when they aren’t.

We had a family of cranes start dancing around our front yard; we were so thrilled we started throwing money into a ball cap for them. No, not really, actually we started throwing bits of bread into the grass. The Sandhill Cranes loved it.

We loved the Sandhill Cranes. Except when we didn’t.

Over time, feeding the cranes became something of a family tradition. The cranes grew used to finding bread littered across the ground, seemingly from Heaven. We grew used to providing manna to the cranes like creatures of heavenly love and mercy.

We laughed when the cranes met us at the car, trumpeting for bread. We chortled when they began to wait for us at the back door, expectant. We joked when they began to stalk the smaller members of our family: the children, the old people, me. There was uncomfortable giggling when the cranes began to surround the house at odd hours and holler for bread.

On the day that I ran out of Sandhill Crane bread and the birds threatened me with outstretched pterodactyl wings and nightmarish screams of rage, I ran back into the house. I began to search the pantry for something else to feed the gigantic birds. Birds whose knife sharp beaks lined up with my eye sockets perfectly. I found some stale coffee cake shoved behind a bag of powdered sugar. I grabbed it—the cake not the sugar.

Standing behind the screen door I threw the coffee cake at the demon cranes and made a run for the barn. They rejected the coffee cake, registered the bait and switch, and came after me like Navy Seals pursuing Somali pirates. I ran and screamed.

The birds hollered and ran. Throwing myself into the tack room I slammed the door shut just as the beasts careened up onto the stoop. Through the dusty glass of the door, I saw the cranes tipping their heads back and forth, their beady eyes glistening as they worked out a way to destroy me.

Sandhill Cranes like bread.  Except when it’s coffee cake.

So this is what I learned from the Sandhill Cranes:  free bread makes for mean cranes; handouts do not breed gratitude and patience; cake is no substitute for bread; getting Sandhill Cranes off the dole is dangerous. They tend to object. Strongly. I’m just glad we didn’t start throwing tuna fish to the bobcats in the back pasture.

Linda (Wild Kingdom) Zern

           

  

LIE MONGERS

Note:  This is a classic ZippityZern post. I felt inspired in this political season to re-post.

HAPPY ELECTION DAY!

According to a special documentary on “body language” over ninety percent of all human communication is non-verbal. (As I type this, my shoulders are very pinched and close to my ears.)

Everyone lies.  I am told that this is true, because people have seen it on a t-shirt and a fictional character on television repeats it a lot. (At this point, my lips are pursed, emphasizing the fine lines and fissures into which my lipstick tends to pour.)

Therefore, if everyone lies and ninety percent of communication is non-verbal then forget about what’s coming out of people’s lips and concentrate on what’s happening between their eyes. (A wrinkle shaped like a cavern just deepened near my left eye.)

I hate lying. I love liars. (My right eye is twitching so hard I can hear it.)

That is a lie. I don’t love liars. I try to love liars in the “love the sinner, hate the sin” way, but it’s hard, because liars tend to lie, and they can’t be trusted with your automobiles, wallet, lawn mower, good name, daughters, or your female cat, and she’s been spayed. I continue to try to love liars, but it’s a struggle.

No, it’s not a struggle; that’s a lie. It’s more like a wrestle—Greco/Roman style. 

Liars are exhausting, because you have to listen to them lying and “read” their body language all at the same time. Or if you’re not around when the liar is lying then you have to hire someone to watch the liar lie, and if you live in a particularly dishonest society, eventually you will run out of people, to watch the people, who are supposed to be watching the people—in case the people are lying or plagiarizing or faking important governmental reports. (See?  It’s exhausting.) So, if it’s true that everyone lies then we’re screwed.

My favorite story about liars is a story my husband likes to tell. (I use it here with permission—no, not really. I totally stole his story.)

At a father/son campout, my husband and others continually warned one young boy to cease and desist putting a sharp, pointy stick in the campfire, igniting the end of the sharp, pointy stick, and then wandering about the campground while waving the now flaming, sharp, pointy stick in the air. He agreed to stop—verbally. (The body language test results have been misplaced.) “Put that stick out,” they demanded. He put it out.

Sherwood retired to his tent, only to emerge later to see the young boy standing in the middle of the campground holding the flaming, sharp, pointy stick aloft—apparently in tribute to the pointy stick fire gods.

“Son!” My husband calls all boys son; it doesn’t necessarily mean a blood relation. “Son! Did you put that stick back in the fire?”

The young boy said, “Nope.”

We have boys. Sherwood knew what he was up against.

“Are you holding a stick?”

“Maybe.”

“Is your hand in a curved position around a former tree branch?”

The phrase “former tree branch” tripped the kid up.

“Yes,” the boy said.

“Is that stick on fire?”

“I don’t know.”  A shower of sparks made the boy flinch. His body language gave him away.

I know it’s old fashioned. I know it’s considered a simple fix for a simple mind, but I like the Ten Commandments. They were written on stone, thus saving paper. They’re short. They’re numbered. They’re to the point.

I especially like the one that read:  Thou shalt not force me to have to learn body language to be able to tell if you’re a big, fat liar when I ask, “Who busted the loveseat?” and you tell me, “I don’t know.” And then six months later, I find broken bits of loveseat hidden behind our wedding picture and all over the house—Sherwood Kevin Zern! And all the grandkids were in on it, including Reagan and she doesn’t have teeth. (I am now leaning toward the computer screen in a combative, aggressive posture.) 

Yep. That’s my favorite commandment. Nah, I’m lying.  Actually, I believe that there are really only two commandments and they’re my favorites.

Thou shalt love God and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself . . . because people who love their neighbors don’t lie to, steal from, lust for, cheat over, shoot at, curse up, or covet their neighbor’s good looking donkeys. Nice people only need two rules, in my opinion.

Linda (Read My Lips) Zern  

 

   

   

THE FOG OF CATS

The world has become a morass of shifting social demands, drifting personal rights, and twirling national fibs. In other words, the world is going to Heck Town in a rotten hand basket. I blame scientific studies and the social scientists that sit hunched over their graph paper, coming up with new ways to apply for grant money.

“A recent study shows . . .” are the most dreadful words in the English language, because, once, we knew what we thought, but now we have to wait for a recent study to know what we think. And what we thought we thought is completely not what the recent study indicates we thought we were thinking. I think.

And the studies keep rolling in . . .

And the grant money keeps rolling out . . .

And I want some. Grant money, that is.

So I’m developing a proposal for a study I’d like to conduct. Hey, it makes as much sense as the study last spring where scientists found that (and I quote) “women with larger breasts make bigger tips, as do those who are slender and blonde. Also, men always want sex, and many want it more often than they get it.”

Here’s my working plot . . . I mean proposal . . . my working proposal to get grant money:  I intend to show that the faster the world spins down the toilet of crazy town, the more cats there are on your computer: pictures, posters, videos, actual pictures of actual cats sitting on actual computers. I estimate that for every single disturbing moment in the news, there are 3.76 to 5.5 depictions of cats on Facebook.

The news doesn’t even have to be all that bad. It can be semi-upsetting or mildly itchy and wham—cats galore.

It’s a pattern. Patterns are pictures that can be graphed. Graphs are like math. Math is close to science. Science can be studied—with enough free money to make the pictures called graphs. See?

Bottom line:  I want free money to study pictures of cats on Facebook and their correlation to bad news: wars, rumors of war, disasters, tragedies, earthquakes, and escalating out-of-control governmental debts and deficits due to the unrestrained doling out of free money.

Kittens? Don’t get me started on kittens. My study will also attempt to prove that when the number of pictures of kittens spikes on social media then a dirty bomb attack is 1) imminent 2) pretty darn close 3) old news.

My study will prove that Americans would rather stare at pictures of cats and kittens then discuss the end of the world. Apparently, the fog of war has become the fog of cats.

Give me money.

Or I’ll make you look at pictures of ‘possums.

Linda (Cat Scratch Fever) Zern

 

    

ANOTHER PRESS RELEASE

THIS TIME THEY SENT ME $70 BUCKS; IT MUST BE SERIOUS!!

[Subject:] Linda L. Zern Wins 2^nd And Is Named A Winner In HumorPress.com; http://humorpress.com/; 's "America's Funniest Humor!" Writing Contest

Linda L. Zern, a writer from Saint Cloud, Florida, is the 2nd-Place winner in the most recent "America's Funniest Humor!"(TM) Writing Contest held by HumorPress.com; http://humorpress.com/; one of the Internet's highest-ranking humor contest sites.

For her accomplishment, Zern has earned publication in HumorPress.com's online humor showcase, $70 in prize money, plus publication in HumorPress.com's online humor showcase. Her entry, "A Word that is Safe," is about the latest and greatest romantic fads sweeping the nation. It’s fifty shades of safe words that might come in handy when you are or are not in the “mood.”

"A Word that is Safe" will be featured in the main showcase until new results are posted after completion of the current contest, which is accepting entries through Dec. 31, 2012.

Other writing awards and recognitions earned by Zern include several semi-finalist and honorable mentions in past HumorPress contests. To enjoy more of Ms. Zern’s humorous essays see her free E-Books at www.smashwords.com/profile/view/zippityzern

HumorPress.com; http://humorpress.com/; 's bi-monthly writing contests provide great opportunities for writers who specialize in humor, and for those with real-life humorous anecdotes to share. 

Down the Rabbit Hole With Children That are Grand

The young folks in my college have lofty goals and plans—get a job, move out of mom’s, travel and see some stuff.

I listen and smile and want to invite them over to my house for Sunday dinner and say to them, “Just keep watching. You’ll see some stuff.”

There are nine children wandering around our house on any given Sunday, ranging in age from one month to eight years of age. If you stay very still and quiet, the underage natives around here will show you things you won’t believe, and you won’t have to travel farther than Saint Cloud, Florida or get yellow fever shots, although bug spray might come in handy, particularly at dusk.

A recent wild grand boy sighting is typical of the “stuff” you can see without having to leave my back porch or risk being taken prisoner by Somali pirates.

Confused, I watched Kip (a three year old in the middle of the pack) circle the live oak in my backyard several times. He looked like a wolf cub hunting for squirrels, and he seemed to be scouting out a likely spot for something. He was. He stopped circling, shucked his drawers, and proceeded to squat.

Wildlife at the Water Hole

“What does that crazy kid think he’s doing?” I asked his mother.

She squinted, her brow furrowing in confusion. Sudden understanding registered on her face. “Oh good grief, that nutty kid is taking a dump in the yard!”

About that time, Zac (two years old and a monkey barbarian) appeared to confer with Kip the Squatter. Kip pointed at the ground. They conferred some more. Zac slowly raised his foot, preparing to stomp on the dump-age of his older brother.

His mother and I screamed, “No, Zac! No! Don’t do it.”

It was a jungle safari moment—raw, real, and rank, and we didn’t have to have a passport to see it.

Heather hurried to confront the outdoor defecator. “Kippy, you’re not supposed to go potty outside.”

“Why?” Kippy asked.

“Because it’s yucky.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not nice.”

“Why?”

“Because trees don’t like it when little boys poop on their roots.”

“Why?”

And that’s when you feel yourself leaving this world to slip down the rabbit hole into another world of fantastical creatures—all looking to mark their territory and play croquet.

So join us for the wild life river-cruise every Sunday. See grandchildren in their natural habitat. See game wardens in action, tracking down rogue boys and girls. Dessert included.

Linda (Pith Helmet) Zern

 

  

IMAGINARY NUMBERS & UNICORNS

ZippityZern's Uncommon Nonsense - College Daze    byLinda Zern

Price: Free! 10240 words. Published on October 11, 2012. Fiction. 

In the third installment of the ongoing ZippityZern collection, Ms. Zern offers up a book about going back to college--and at her age no less. The collection is stuffed full of what's she noticed, assimilated, studied, and been exposed to while learning how to use imaginary numbers to count unicorns.

Fallen Idol

Linda L. Zern

English 367

Story #2 – Rough

Here's a short story I've written for my creative writing workshop. The characters are no one you know, will ever know, or have ever known. It just ain't true. 

My husband sat bathed in the lime green glow of one of his computer screens. I slung my book bag

onto his desk and kissed him on the back of his head.

            “Hey, you know what I just realized?” I reached for a Chocolate Kiss from the stash of candy he kept in a plastic cup next to his computer mouse. The cup read Analysts Do It With Their Real Parts.

            “I just realized that I can’t remember what color your face is. I haven’t seen you in natural sunlight in a year and a half,” I said, leaning against the desk next to his chair.

            “The true color of my complexion is the least of our worries.  We’re going to have to sell the house and move.”

            “Because?”

            “Because it wasn’t Nick.”

            The printer started to click and tremble, getting ready to spit out a single printed sheet. I knew not to expect more than a single page, because any more than that and the machine tended to go into a convulsive nervous breakdown.

            “What do you mean it wasn’t Nick? I saw him. I saw him on CNN with my own eyes. Heather, his very own sister, saw him too. We saw him.”

            “Nope. You saw someone that looked like Nick. And I can prove it to you.” He reached behind me, pulled a sheet of paper from the printer before it could jam, and handed it to me.

            There, in pixilated color, was the picture of a young soldier kneeling in the sands of some unidentified Iraq desert. The young man had my husband’s nose, his eyes, and his smart aleck half smile. He was kneeling next to the bits and pieces of a giant bust of Saddam Hussein. Saddam looked smug. The soldier looked liked he’d just pulled down the statue of a ruthless jerk. The soldier was our son Nick.

 Except that he wasn’t.

            The caption read, Staff Sergeant Shane Maxwell of Engineering Battalion 504 outside of Fallujah, posing with the remnants of . . . 

            The rest was a blur. I felt lightheaded.

            “Oh my God. We have to move,” I said.

            “That was my take on it,” he said.

            “I told everyone that I’d seen Nick on CNN. Everyone. I called my mother in the home. Heather told everyone at school.” I squinted harder at the picture. “This is a picture of Nick. It’s got to be. I ought to know my own son when I see . . .”

            “No, it really isn’t.” He pointed to his computer screen. Reuters had more pictures of the same scene, more pictures of the soldier named Shane, squatting next to the giant head as it rested catawampus in the sand.

            “Maybe, they got his name wrong? His unit? How about the wrong desert?”

            The desk shook as the printer shimmied. He printed off yet another picture. I yanked it out of the printer. It still read Shane Maxwell.

            “No. It can’t be true. I told everyone at CHURCH. I made it sound like the heavens of CNN had opened, and that I’d had a flipping vision. I talked about prayers and voices from above. I sounded like Joan of Arc of Kissimmee Park Road.”

            I took a breath, noticing that my husband had his eyes closed and that the light of the computer screen had gone a pale yellow. It made him look like he had jaundice.

            “We have to move,” I said.

            “Either that,” he said, hesitating, “or we take this to our grave. Do you understand what I’m saying?” He stood up and grabbed me by the shoulders. “No one and I mean no one is to ever know. We go on as before.” He flopped back down into his desk chair.

            I caught his eye in the light of the Goggle homepage. Something about his reflection bugged me.

            “Hey, wait a minute.”

I looked more carefully at the reflection of my husband’s face. Then I looked at the Reuters picture in my hand. I looked at my husband’s face again. “This kid has your nose.”

            “You mentioned that already.”

            He took the picture out of my hand and leaned back in his desk chair. The chair squeaked like a hamster wheel in need of WD-40.

            “He kind of has my nose,” he said. “I guess he does, maybe around the nostrils, a little bit.” He sounded unsure or maybe worried.

            I looked over his shoulder at the picture.

            “Hey,” I said. “Those are your eyes, mister.”

            “How can you tell? He’s squinting. It’s pretty sunny when you invade a desert. It tends to play havoc on the squint lines.”

            “No. I mean it. That kid could be our kid. I thought it was our kid. I stood up in church and claimed that I’d had a spiritual experience via CNN. What the hell?”

            “Okay, sure, if you don’t look carefully, he looks a little bit like Nick or me.”

            “No, dear, he could be our Nick. Maybe a twenty-five, twenty-six year old version of Nick.”

            “What are you trying to say? Don’t answer that. And that concludes this episode of Looney Tune TV. If I’m lucky,” he mumbled, jumping to his feet he grabbed the candy cup, and started to unwrap a Kit Kat bar.

            “Where are you going?

            “I need a coke. I can tell this is going to make me thirsty.”

            I followed him into the kitchen, one of the pictures of Shane Maxwell wadded in my hand.

            “You know what?”

            He sighed.

            “Don’t sigh. I hate when you do that.”

            He stood in front of the refrigerator, pressing his forehead against the stainless steel door.

            “And don’t do that. You’re going to leave a forehead print. But, come to think of it, that might be okay. I might need the DNA.”

            “DNA?” He did a good job of sounding weary. “Because?”

            “Because apparently the kid with the big nose and squinty eyes— that look just like your big nose and squinty eyes—appears to be a love child from your checkered past.”

            “Babe, I know you’re worried about Nick but a love child. Really?”

            “Sure, why not?”

The front door bell saved his sorry butt. I ran to open it, not bothering to run through my peephole safety check. I yanked the door open.

“Liz, you are never going to believe the day I’ve had.”

My best friend stood on my doorstep, one hand on her giant sack of a purse and the other hand on her hip. Her hair looked like she’d walked through a wind tunnel of hair spray, and her lips looked hand waxed. 

“Come on, I’ll treat you to an Arctic Freeze at Dairy Queen,” she said.

“I can’t. I have to stay here and accuse my husband of fathering children out of wedlock.”

She laughed. “Can I help? And can this be accomplished after we have a Blizzard?”

“No, I’m serious.” I shoved the picture at her.

            She smoothed the picture out, took a look, and then whistled.

            “Shane Maxwell. But didn’t you tell everyone that you saw Nick?” She whistled again. “Oh man, this calls for something harder than ice cream. Come on. It’s on me.”

            I made sure to slam the door behind me as we left. I crawled into the front seat of Liz’s Triumph Spitfire. She hit the gas and headed toward the Marketplace Mall. When Liz had said “something harder” she’d meant pretzels and lemonade. We wandered the mall, pretzels in hand, landing in front of Frederick’s of Hollywood.

            “Nice symbolism,” I said.

            “How so?”

            “I haven’t the foggiest notion. I’m babbling, and I freely admit it.”

            “Okay, so I’ll edit out every fifth word and replace it with yippy.”

            “Done.”

            “It’s not his fault,” I said, anesthetizing myself with an enormous bite of cinnamon pretzel. “The world is upside down and we’re riding the under swell of . . .” I waved cinnamon over my head, “disaster. That’s right disaster. And I’m Irish, which means I’m always waiting for the next potato famine or a long lost love child to show up.”

            Liz snorted, “Please. I know your husband. He’s hiding a love child, the way I’m hiding the fact that I’m secretly married to Ben Affleck.”

            I could always count on Liz to talk me off the ledge. She was two husbands and one crush on Ben Affleck beyond being as loopy as I felt. 

            “You’re right, as usual. That man can’t even argue with any sense. I once got mad and told him that Nick wasn’t his kid, and he looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘Well Heather isn’t yours.’”

            “I rest my case. What did you say?”

            “I said, ‘You have no idea how to play this game, do you?’”

            There was a pause.

            “Nick is his? Right?”

            “Have you seen Nick? Clones would look less identical to my husband.”

            Laughing, she finished her Diet Coke with a wink and a finger waggle. “Don’t you remember college? He followed you around for a year before he finally got up to the good stuff. Remember I knew him first. Come on,” she said, pulling me to my feet. “I hear they had to cart off a couple of women from Dillards’s shoe department for fighting over the new Steve Maddens. Let’s hurry, the blood might still be wet.”

“Hey, babe, I’m home. Sorry, Liz and I closed down the mall. There was a sale and possibly blood.”

            A pile of schoolbooks at the bottom of the stairs told me that Heather was home and probably not doing her homework. I headed toward the office.

I knew immediately that something was wildly out of order. The flickering lights of my husband’s office were dark, the underlying hum of circuitry silent. He was dead, or more likely, under arrest for having enough computer hardware and software to shoot down a government drone.

            “Babe!” My voice echoed.

            A lonely sound drifted from one darkened corner of his office. It might have been a moan. I reached for the light switch.

            “Don’t,” he said. “We need to talk.”

            “In the dark?”

            He ignored the obvious.

            “I’ve been thinking, and I have a couple of possible explanations for that picture.” He didn’t give me a chance to interject; his words poured out like an avalanche of pre-scripted confessions from the Montel Williams show.  “I’m adopted and I have an evil twin. Shane is my evil nephew. Or there was that year that I paid for school by donating stuff, and I don’t mean old clothes. And there was that college class where we all had to do cheek swabs for the professor, but it seemed pretty sketchy since it was a statistics class. I’m thinking cloning gone amiss. Or . . .” He took a deep breath. “Then there was my freshman year, before I met you, in Professor Maxwell’s class. Pick one.”

            “Maxwell?”

            “I thought you might go with that option.”

            “You had a professor named Maxwell?”

            “Before I knew you. Keep that in mind.” His voice ghosted through the dark. “I was young. I was cute. I was desperate. It was speech class. I’m a computer science engineer. I don’t do speeches.”

            “Oh, I don’t know. This is a pretty interesting declaration.”

            “Before I knew you. Keep that timeline firmly in mind. Pre-you.”

            I sighed, thanking my Irish ancestors for preparing me for the inevitable flood of moldy potatoes.

            “Great, so not only is the soldier not our soldier, well, not my soldier, but we’ve become an episode of a bad talk show. What’s the plan? Because I’m pretty sure that in the flow chart that is your brain, you’ve come up with a plan, because Liz is going to put it together sooner or later, and you may not care, but I do.”

            “It was pre-you, just keep that in mind. In the great timeline of life, sequence matters.”

            “Just give me the plan, because I know you’ve got one.”

            Our daughter, Heather, slammed her way down the stairs and into the darkened office.

            “There’s a plan? So what’s the plan?”

            “We’re moving.” We said in unison.