ON TIME ARRIVAL

When I tell folks that I’ve been to places like Korea and Australia, they always say the same thing.

“Oh, I would love to travel like that. That’s so exciting.”

No. It’s not. It’s brutal.

It’s thirteen hours at a pop squished in an airplane seat the size and shape of no one, and unless a person is the general consistency of pudding I cannot imagine anyone but a pudding pop person flying comfortably.

Traveling is not exciting.

Arriving is exciting. Arriving is the part of traveling that has something going for it.

Unfortunately, by the time  many travelers get to the arriving part they have been going through the traveling part for so long they have a difficult time appreciating the actual getting to where they’re going part.  And the more you travel, the worse it gets.

My husband of thirty-plus years travels a lot for his work. When I say a lot I mean he has been fondled by strangers in airports on every major continent except Africa. It’s starting to take its toll.

Recently, after a grueling return flight from South Korea, we flew into the delightfully bankrupt city of Detroit, Michigan.  The experience was a lot like looking across the DMZ into North Korea—no one seemed very happy with the situation and everyone is pretty sure it’s the other guy’s fault.

But we were home. Almost.

All we had to do was clear customs, get through immigration, retrieve our already checked luggage, go back through security, take our shoes back off, get fondled by an Amazonian woman declaring that I was wearing a belt because “the machine SAID so,” Note: I was not wearing a belt, redress, repack, find the shuttle bus, fling ourselves onto the bus, race the final ten gates to THE proper gate which was changed from the previous faux gate, locate our ticket information, and finally collapse into yet another airplane seat designed for pudding people.

Having fun yet?  Yeah, me neither, especially when my husband lost his mind at one point in the ordeal, stood in the middle of the airport, observed two customs agents stamping forms in slow motion, and yelled, “This is a F-----g mess.”

“Boy, we’re traveling now,” I said.

Calmly I took his arm and hissed, “Be quiet, you crazy.  Airport jail is real. Believe me.”

Pulling up my shirt, I demonstrated the stretchy nature of my 110% stretchy band on my stretch pants. “Does this look like a belt to you? What? No?”

He pretended to understand me by ignoring me and grinding his teeth.

“Well, like I told the Amazonian TSA chick, ‘If that machine is telling you that I have a belt on then it’s defective and you should contact the manufacturer, because it’s broken.”

Several airports officials that could have been working but weren’t working watched us with jaundiced eye.

We shuffled into line tried clicking our heels together three times and saying, “There’s no place like home.”

Because, there is no place like home, and that’s what I’ve learned from traveling.

Linda (Elastic Band) Zern

Will Work for Free

I go to college. I am a student of higher education.  I have a book bag from Gap, a map of my college campus, and for seventy dollars per year they let me park in the parking garage.

I pay, no—strike that—my husband pays an exorbitant amount of money for me to go to a private college with an excellent reputation and a parking garage. When I say exorbitant, I mean stupid. My husband forks over stupid amounts of money for my education.

Why?

Because I sleep with him. That’s why.

Oh, you mean—me. Why do I go to college?

I go to college because when I’m done I’ll be able to get a good job working for an evil corporation that will suck my life’s blood like a giant tick, thus turning me into an empty, fluttering sack of desiccated skin stuff, while that very corporation crushes the “average, regular American” under its evil feet like Godzilla stomping Tokyo.

I am an English major. Can you tell?

Thus we come to the crux of the higher education dilemma.

Parents, or in my case, a sugar daddy, spend stupid amounts of money so that students of higher education can go to school where they are told, often and emphatically by famous authors that CEO’s making stupid amounts of money are both greedy and practicing the moral equivalent of beating up five-year olds for their Halloween candy. Note:  These famous authors never GIVE their books away but always take CHECKS OR CASH for their books.

The students who listen to these famous authors are then encouraged to graduate, with honors, so they can make stupid amounts of money, which is cool as long as said students donate stupid amounts of that greed money back to their colleges.

It’s called the alumni association.

Higher education is like one of those Chinese finger traps, where you stick your fingers in a tube of cheap, brightly colored paper and pull. The harder you pull, the higher your tuition will go.

I’ve fooled everyone and outsmarted the evil Tokyo stomping corporations. I never plan to graduate or get a “real” job.

For thirty years, I’ve listened to folks whine about: their rotten bosses, their rotten jobs, their mind numbing work related responsibilities, their crap salaries, their crap retirement, their idiotic co-workers, and lest we forget—the crap evil corporations which crush us all by importing Chinese finger traps from China, forcing us to buy them with their clever marketing ploys which they learned how to do by hiring COLLEGE GRADUATES WITH DEGREES IN MARKETING.

End the proliferation of evil corporations now! Don’t go to college! Be a stay at home mom and paint the baseboards! Because that’s as NON-PROFIT as it gets.

Bang a drum in a public park and demand to be paid the same amount of money as, oh let’s go crazy here and say, a lawyer.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned as a student of higher education it’s that societies can never have too many lawyers or too many drum bangers or too many graduates with student debt greater than the average cost of a Hollywood mansion  . . .  

And don’t forget that we can never have too many kiosks at the mall selling Chinese finger traps imported from China where they shoot the factory manager when the Ministry of Embarrassment finds out he’s been using cheap, lead based inks and dyes to cut corners and pocket the difference.

Linda (Will Work for Free) Zern

A QUICKIE: Postings that are Short and Sweet!

 In a recent argument, my husband hurtled that time honored challenge to stay-at-home-moms everywhere. "Get a job!" he yowled. I yowled back, "I can't. I don't have time. I have seven jobs already!! THAT I DON'T GET PAID FOR!!" I'm the biggest socialist I know. So, I've decided to chronicle the jobs I am not paid for. 

Why would I go to work? Do I look delusional?

JOB # 1: Raccoon Garbage Clean Up Team Captain. I have special gloves that I use. They are pink.

JOB #2: Poop Scoop Coordinator. It was my husband's turn. This was as far as he got. No worries, Babe. I'm on it.

It's Written All Over You!

I am a mature college student (i.e. a grownup), and I loved my anthropology class. Anthropology is a class where the half-baked theories hit the proverbial road. My anthropology teacher asked the class who thought that falling in love was a choice. Two hands went up.  Mine and the teacher’s. Everyone else (i.e. the young and delusional) thought love was a chemical reaction brought on by twerking. I think they should all wear T-shirts that read:  Not responsible for my chemicals! I could fall in love with anyone, anytime, anywhere.

At the end of the semester my teacher pulled my final exam paper out of my cramped, clenched, nerveless fingers and said, “You’ve got success written all over you.”

I’m going to have that printed on a T-shirt. I love the idea that I have things written all over me, the same way I love college. In college nobody complains when you use hefty pretentious words and think deep thoughts—out loud and in front of people.

Then I go home and the guy with whom I have mixed DNA in the blender of love says, “You gonna fire up that stove any time soon?”

 And I say, “I did.  Last week. You remember?”

So, I’m going to get another T-shirt that says, “I’m too short to cook.”

Because I am too short to cook, and my face is way too close to the fire, and I get sparks and grease in my eyes, not to mention all the scary murderous knives sitting around the kitchen waiting to stab people to death.

Or I’ll wear a T-shirt that says, “Kiss the Short Chick. Order Takeout.”

I just wish I had success written all over me, all of the time.

Unfortunately, sometimes I have “Help me! I'm melting!” written all over me; usually in the middle of the night when I’m sneaking around the house attempting to turn the thermostat down to a temperature approximating permafrost to combat the effects of hot flashes that are hotter than a pot of boiling lobsters.

I need a T-shirt that reads, “Caution:  I’m hot. Literally.”

I once went to church and had someone tell me, “Linda, we’ve just chosen you to be the person most likely to be burned at the stake.” I would rather not discuss the individuals who thought I had this sentiment written all over me. I’ll just call them the grand inquisitors in pointy hats crowd.

In this case, I should wear a T-shirt that says, “Joan of Arc is my Home Girl.”

Once, in a Tae Kwon Do class, and about the time I was feeling swift, strong, and capable, my body on its way to becoming a honed instrument of confident death dealing against the knife toters out there—also mean people—the lady behind me tapped me on the shoulder.

Randomly, I executed a powerful roundhouse kick through the danger fraught air next to her face. Kick. Snap. Retract. Rub surreptitiously at the thigh cramp.
 
She narrowed her eyes at what she might have thought of as my pointless leg flailing and said, “I’m not sure if you know this or not but you have a dryer sheet stuck to the back of your uniform.”

She plucked a dryer sheet from the back of my martial arts uniform and handed it to me.  I tucked it into my lovely purple belt and practiced more powerful leg flailing at imaginary mean people.

That day I had, “Hey, Dork, you have a dryer sheet stuck to your shoulder!” written all over me. I vetoed that T-shirt.

People in my Zumba class have told me that I should get the “Having the most fun!” award, and that’s a T-shirt I could get behind. Or maybe it could say, “Getting my money’s worth.”

When they say bump, I bump. When they say grind, I grind, and sometimes I throw in a poorly executed martial arts kick for old times sake and to see if my hip socket still rotates that far.

Here’s hoping that whatever’s written all over you is inspiring, noble, grand, and true—most of the time.

Linda (Write On!) Zern

OMEN

One of my favorite movie lines of all time was from an old movie where a bunch of ancient Greeks stood around waiting for another ancient Greek guy to cut open a live chicken and “read” its entrails. Entrails are guts, in case you’re wondering.

Are you following this?

They [those ancient Greek types] used to take a live chicken and then CUT IT OPEN. Then they’d shake the stuff that was on the inside of the chicken out of the chicken onto the kitchen table and look for messages while other ancient Greek types stood around waiting for the six o’clock news.

Probably as accurate as cable news, I’m thinking.

In the movie, the entrails reader saw nothing but ominous, disastrous news in the pile of chicken innards—all this is also known as a bad, bad omen.

The king of the Greeks after listening to the chicken gut reader give them the BAD omen news looked him in the eye, and said, “We reject your omen.”

I love that.

That’s brass.

That’s guts. That’s . . . hard on the chickens.

This fictional movie scene sums up what I believe is wrong with bad religious substitutes—folks can take them or leave them.  It’s the fatal flaw when worshipping at the altar of The Great Church of Science and Statistics or the High Church of Me, Myself, and I.

It’s easy to reject the omens.

The latest scientific research suggest that you should exercise more and less; eat meat or never; put the baby to sleep on its back, front, side, head; power nap; never power nap; cold therapy but not hot compresses, stand up sit down . . . fight, fight, fight.

Honestly, I reject the scientific omens.

Lightning strikes! Now, lightning strikes I believe in.

I once saw lightning hit the ground next to us while we were driving in the car. The lightning strike was invisible, but there was an impressive explosion of dirt, a smell of burning ozone, and a molar rattling crack of thunder. It was like a sign from God—also an omen.

“Wow, did you see that?” I said.

“What?” My husband mumbled.

“The invisible lightning that almost blew us up. It was six feet away.”

“Are you asking me if I saw invisible lightning?”

I recognized the sound of skeptical disbelief when I heard it, but I kept at it.

“Seriously, you didn’t hear that thunder? We were almost hit by lightning. What can that mean?”

His knuckles resembled kitchen cabinet knobs as he clutched the steering wheel and growled at surrounding traffic.

“It means that God’s aim must be off today, because he was shooting for that moron in the truck in front of us.”

“God’s aim is off?  This is not a comforting thought.”  I contemplated the idea that God was having a bad day at the gun range. “I reject your omen,” I said. “God was definitely sending a message . . . and he was sending it . . . to you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s a sign. Like those guys who used to cut open chickens and get messages from their guts.”

“Okay, I’ll play along,” he sighed. “What’s the message?”

“We should get more chickens.”

And that’s how omens work at our house.

Linda (Gizzard Guts) Zern

























 















 

      

LOVE UNDER THE MERGE SIGN--A CLASSIC ZIPPITYZERN

A professor asked the college class, “Who decides if a baby is a boy or a girl?”



One bright young thing piped up and said, “Society.”



After my son related this fascinating tale of modern American education, I walked out to my chicken coop and watched as my thirteen roosters commenced to crow, spur, posture, fight, flap, peck, and gang rape their way through my flock of hens.



“Who told you, you were roosters,” I yelled. 



I sold twelve of the thirteen roosters to my next-door neighbor for six dollars and fifty cents a piece. He got a bargain.  My hens got some relief, and I learned a lesson about the nature of the species. Roosters do not lay eggs.



According to a recent scientific (so it must be good) study men think about sex 2,072 times every second of every minute of every day—girls, not so much, but this is, of course, because of rigid social conditioning and that poem about snips, snails, and puppy dog tails.



Personally, I’m glad my mother did not socialize me to be a boy so that I would have to think about sex constantly. I occasionally enjoy thinking about—oh I don’t know . . . breakfast or the Civil War.



When my husband was born, his mother, fooled by his resemblance to a rooster, socialized him to be a boy, which means that when he became a teenager he enjoyed riding naked on motorcycles through the Florida back woods but not to worry; he likes to point out he always wore tennis shoes so that he could shift and to protect his feet.



Now my husband (of thirty plus years) flies away to various locations around the globe on Sunday afternoon and gets home on Thursday nights, and I used to pick him up at the airport, my heart filled with that little frisson of happiness and excitement that accompanied the notion of my man coming home from the sea.

I was always glad to see him—for about five minutes, and then he would talk. I make him take a taxi now.



While coming home from the airport, trying to merge into a steady stream of traffic, and not get us crushed under a shuttle bus, I would often say stuff like, “I’m so glad you’re home, honey.”



A noise not unlike the sound of pizza being digested would greet this announcement.



“So how was your week? How was your flight? See anyone interesting in the airport like Caesar Milan?”



Silence. Silence. Quiet and then more and a bigger silence and then . . .



“Let’s get it on,” he would say.



“What?” My hands would clench convulsively on the steering wheel. “Should I pull off the road next to the palm tree or do you want to wait until we pass the merge sign, and please tell me this isn’t your idea of romance?”



The conversation often deteriorated from there.



What I want to know is who told my husband he was a rooster?



I’d like to thank them, because after thirty plus years, four kids, and ten grandchildren he’s still crazy about me. What can I do?  We’re just getting to the good part and I, for one, am glad that roosters do not lay eggs.



Linda (Henny Penny) Zern  

Travel Tips A Go-Go

Travel Advisory 101

Having inadvertently become a world traveler via my husband’s obscene amount of free air miles, I have herein jotted down a few travel tips for the modern adventurer.

PS:  Yes, I am aware that the trips I have been on would have taken months and months and months to accomplish, and that at certain points in those trips, when the horses starting dropping dead from heat and boredom, the crew would have to toss the dead horse bodies into the ocean—thus the horse latitudes. I don’t care. It’s not my fault I got myself born after the Spanish discovered long distance cruises—also maize and stuffing galleons full of other people's  gold.

Linda Z’s Travel Tips:

1.    Wear clothes you’d wear when nine months pregnant, ninety three percent stretch and seven percent Lycra. Don’t be shocked when the thin black line that stands between you and exploding underwear (aka the TSA,) thinks that you are wearing a belt. Or as I said to the last TSA sweetie who patted me down looking for IED’s in my pants, “Sweetie, if that machine thinks I’m wearing a belt it’s defective, and you should contact the manufacturer.” Sweetie thought about having me arrested.

2.    Never wear bras with under wires. But don’t be surprised when the TSA says the machine indicates that you have an IED in your sports bra.

3.     Carry a purse the size of luggage. If it makes you tip over when fully loaded with nose tissues, cough drops, lip-gloss, and chocolate covered raisins it’s perfect.

4.     Carry multiple packs of nose tissues. They come in handy when trying to remove the boulder-sized boogers that spontaneously form in your nostrils from breathing bird flu infested airplane air.

5.     Never read the bird flu informational posters upon landing.

6.     Stay the size and shape of a shoehorn. The better to curl up in an airplane seat like a squirrel—a shoehorn squirrel.

7.     If checking luggage, purchase and use the largest suitcase sold on Amazon. It will make you feel better when you see the forlorn looks on anyone who has to carry it. It’s petty I know but oddly satisfying.

8.     Wear shoes made of duct tape. They scan well. But don’t be surprised if the TSA says that the machine indicates that there are Somali pirates hiding in them.

9.    Never eat the tiny airplane food. It’s not real.

10.  Carry a security blanket with dog, cat, and goat hair on it. With any luck your seatmates will notice and be horrified, asking to be moved to another flight.

11.  Have a contingency plan in case the world folds like a cheap greeting card while you’re flying over the Pacific Ocean. Ask yourself, “Can I survive on ‘the desert island’ with one bottle of Tylenol PM or should I double up?”

12.  And finally . . . never, and I mean never look the pilot in the eye when he butts in front of you in the line for the tiny potty. It’s the law. If pilots look their passengers in the eye they will turn to salt, the passengers not the pilot. If passengers don’t turn to salt then the pilots are allowed to treat the passengers like Somali pirates armed with IED underwire bras.

The best thing about traveling is making sure other people see you seeing things. Once, you had to invite your friends and acquaintances over for dinner and feed them and then force them to see your vacation home movies; now you can taunt them with updates on Facebook. No refreshments necessary. And you hardly ever have to toss dead horses over the rail into the ocean.

Linda (Turn Back Now) Zern