Relax, Your Government is Keeping You Safe From Crotch Metal

Flew to Ohio. Flew back from Ohio. Got strip searched in Ohio.

Okay, maybe not all the way naked, but it was close.

It was a lovely little family trip to experience a baby’s blessing and naming ceremony. You know, one of those delightful days that make all the other days—worth it.

This delightful day happened in Ohio. We don’t live in Ohio. We have to fly to Ohio from Florida to experience this delightfulness. We could drive, but we’d rather ride Florida alligators in public without pants.

On the way back from Ohio, in the Dayton airport, we were shuffled into the regular person line by TSA. Usually, we get to go through the pre-check line because our Poppy is a travel diva who doesn’t have to be a “regular” person due to excessive perks.

What I learned being a regular person:

The fancy, expensive, taxpayer funded scanner machine is easy to confuse. I confused it with plastic sparkles on my sweater, which it detected as plane exploding metal. The next thing I know a TSA-stranger-lady is asking me if I would like to go in a private place to have my breasts touched.

Tempting! But no. I turned my head and said, “Get it over with.” TSA-stranger-lady patted down my confusing plastic sparkles and then moved on to my chubby thighs. I said, “Hey, there aren’t any sparkles down there.”

It’s possible TSA-stranger-lady did not care.

She waved me through after checking my hands for powdered sugar. (That was a near thing. I had some dreamy chocolate covered strawberries at my daughter-in-law’s house.)

Shaken, I straightened my sparkles, looked over my shoulder, and saw my seven-month pregnant daughter having her crotchal area checked for metallic objects. TSA-stranger-lady had my daughter’s shirt pulled up to Heather’s nipple region and was running her hands over my sixteenth grandchild. Heather started to cry.

That’s when I yelled, “Cry, Baby! Cry! You cry right now!”

Stripped of her dignity and Ugg boots (made in Australia and purchased by the above-mentioned travel diva) Heather tried to put her footwear back on after the TSA-stranger-lady got through with her and went to smoke a cigarette, but the pregnant chick couldn’t bend that far, so Conner, her twelve-year old, steered her to a plastic airport chair and put the boots back on his mother’s feet.

“Mom,” she sniffled, “the machine thought I had metal in my crotch.”

“It’s broken. Let’s go home.”

So, at this fine season of peace on earth, good will to us, please be advised your government is working hard to keep you safe from my plastic chest sparkles and the pregnant chick’s crotch metal.

Merry Christmas,

Linda (You Missed a Spot) Zern

DON ARGO AWARD WINNING LITERATURE

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Don Argo Award Winning Literature

Gaslighting

Gaslight is an old, old movie. It’s a classic. It’s an old classic. The beautiful Ingrid Bergman is in it. She’s a classic.

In the movie, her husband tries to drive her insane by moving stuff, hiding stuff, and dimming stuff. The movie coined the term gaslighting or to be gaslighted. It means trying to drive people crazy by means of moving stuff, hiding stuff, and dimming stuff like the gaslights.

Since the invention of the lightbulb, people (mostly my husband) try to gaslight people (mostly me) by acting like they’ve NEVER heard people (again me) say that I need someone (mostly my husband) to change the lightbulb in the ceiling fan on the porch. Because if I change it I have to drag the ladder from the barn, climb to the shaky top, balance on the top rung, while holding the lightbulb in my mouth and . . .

It’s still dark out there on the porch when the racoons form a human pyramid trying to pick the lock to the office and get to the mini-fridge.

The gaslighting conversation goes like this. “Honey, did you change the lightbulb, so that I can fight off racoons in the night?”

Honey says, “What porch?”

Recently, Honey was in Australia. He called me and wanted to know if I wanted a pair of Ugg boots. I said, “No thanks. I think they’re ugly and they make me look like an Inuit Indian, but I could go for a pair of those backless, slip-ons they make.” I purposely did not call them mules because I was pretty sure he’d bring me an actual mule.

He bought a pair of Ugg boots for daughter # 1, daughter # 2, daughter-in-law # 1, and a neighbor lady. I received?

A bookmark.

Made of wood.

With a kangaroo.

Am I speaking English? Is he? Did my desk lamp just dim?

And don’t even get me started on how often he thinks he’s told me stuff because he thought it to himself really loudly, or is he just pretending to think stuff he never told me?

Gaslighting.

Linda (Light Bright) Zern

WARNING - Learning Curve Ahead!!!

Watching my son-in-law try to dress our first granddaughter for her ride home from the hospital was painful. He gingerly tried to trap one of her flailing fists to gently guide her hand through a darling pink jumpsuit. The fist eluded him. He acted like she was made of frozen glass spider webs. Finally, I could take it no more; backing him away from the baby, I grabbed her fist and shoved it through the sleeve of her outfit; first one and then repeat. She was dressed in less than a minute.

The learning curve to dressing a newborn baby isn’t steep, but it is real, and it’s a pattern for the rest of our ever-learning lives. Just about the time you’re pretty sure you know stuff, the stuff changes and becomes a baby with twitchy hands or a book that needs formatting.

In nothing is this more evident than in the shifting world of social media and the Internet.

I no longer have babies that resemble my husband. I have graduated to making babies that resemble “War and Peace,” only a lot shorter. I write novels. They are like my babies, and I want you to read them—not read to them.

When people ask me what I write, I say, “Yes.”

The learning curve associated with writing books is varied and curvy. First, you learn how to keep your baby safe from the black hole of Where did it go? I know I hit the save button! And then you progress all the way up to books on audio, where you’re interviewing actors to read your book—on tape!

It’s not hard, but there’s some tech stuff and a bit of a learning curve. That’s what I’ve been told.

So let’s discuss what is meant by “learning curve.”

1. It means that you are empty of answers—also ignorant. How do you grab a baby’s jerky little hand? Will it hurt the baby? Are babies made of frozen glass spider webs? Is CreateSpace run by elves? Why does my formatting look like reformed Egyptian? 
2. You are not stupid because you are ignorant, but you will feel stupid.
3. The feeling of stupid will give way to the feeling of intense, painful frustration because people will start explaining how to ride the learning curve, using words you will not understand.
4. If your learning curve is anything like algebra and it will be; those that know will use words you don’t understand over and over again, getting louder and louder, until you pretend to “get it.” When they say, “See?” You shout, “Of course.” Then cry.
5. After a zillion hours of riding the learning curve of ___________________ (fill in the blank) you will acquire a certain level of proficiency.
6. Then THEY will change the program, the coding, or the rules.

The good news is that learning curve stuff is good for me, and writing books is like having a baby made by my brain. It keeps me young. It keeps me sharp. It keeps me in the game. Otherwise, I might never have been able to figure out how to stick a baby’s hand through one of those tight, clingy, little sleeves.

Linda (Sit Tight) Zern 

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Zippity Zerns Talks Changing Genres: an interview on the Hangin With Web...

Sensitivity Readers and the End of Literature

How To Talk To Yourself

I read that intelligent people talk to themselves. It’s true. I know because I’m intelligent, and I talk to myself. A lot. I also know because I read it on the Internet, so it must be true.

One of my granddaughters asked me, “YaYa? Why you talk you’self all the time?”

“Because, kid, I’m the only one listening to me.”

And to figure out if I’m worth listening to at all.

Talking to yourself is good for developing arguments, working through puzzles, reviewing conversations, and testing out syntax and vocabulary. It can also make you look as crazy as a loon.

But brainstorming with your own brain is efficient; your less likely to have to endure the eyeroll of disdain from your own eyes, or the shoulder shrug of indifference from your own shoulders.

It’s less group. More work.

And there’s no one to tell you that you can’t  turn that project/idea/experiment upside down and inside out to see if it glitters better in the moonlight than the sunshine.

Talking to yourself, I’m for it.

However . . .

As a dedicated self-talker I’ve run into a bit of a snag. I’m at the point where I’ve talked to myself so long, that sometimes I say things out loud that I only think I’ve thought, and then I repeat myself and people say, “Hey, you just said that.” And I say, “No, I just thought that in my thinker, better known as my brain.” And they say, “You’re nuts.”

So, that’s what I think about that.

Excuse me, I have to go talk this over—with myself.

Linda (Chatty Cathy) Zern