DRAMA QUEEN

Drama Queen

I am a writer and therefore drama runs through my veins like a red tide on the ocean.

I used to think that mysteries would be hard to write because I could never figure out ‘who done it.’ But now, I see that murder mysterious are easy: someone is dead; someone is going to be dead; someone is thinking about making someone dead. Drama. Built in. And readers love it. Mysteries top the Amazon best seller charts every single year.

Which is weird because social media like Facebook is covered in anti-drama memes. “Get rid of the drama in your life. Go on a cruise. Live in a moss-covered cave.”

It’s a crock. Human beings love drama. Our games are full of it. Our entertainment drips with it. Our literature is not literature without it—conflict, opposition, and goals thwarted.

Drama is queen and I, for one, embrace it. A story, even a children’s story, must contain elements of drama and conflict or we are just humming in the dark. Grimm’s Fairy Tales were, in their original forms, cautionary tales designed to warn children and their parents about the inherent dangers in the dank, scary forests of our lives, and we’re still telling the tales. Sure, we’ve watered them down some with show tunes, but we could never imagine Snow White without the poisoned apple.

Drama gets a bad rap, and it shouldn’t.

It’s why I love writing dystopian fiction. The apocalypse drips with drama. And we love it. I love it. Lights go out, electric fails, and we are thrust into the landscape of struggle and survival. And we love it!  Sex is a big deal again. Food is a life and death struggle. Enemies abound. Drama. Cool.

I do have to laugh, though, when I read the constant touting of all women in dystopian literature as strong, kick-A women. I’m not sure that’s true or should be true. Isn’t it more interesting to have a regular woman given to pedicures and migraines who becomes a kick-A woman capable of skinning a cat and then boiling it?

Just a dramatic thought.

But there’s a downside. I am a writer. My kids don’t call me for two days, and I’ve got them dead in a ditch. It’s a professional hazard.

Oh, and by the way, I can imagine skinning a cat. My great-grandmother refused to eat rabbit all her days. Why? Because during the real apocalypse of the Great Depression butchers in Chicago would skin cats, chop off their heads and feet, and sell them as rabbit. My great-grandmother never got over it, and she was as kick-A as they come.

On a Facebook page, followed by writer types, the discussion faded into whether or not writers should kill off pets in their stories or is that too offensive, too harsh for a modern readership? I commented, “I write dystopian books. Bad things happen.”

Chew on that.

So, here we are—to drama or not drama. In my opinion, kick-A women take drama, stick it in a blender, throw in an egg, and then swallow it down like the ‘hair of the dog’ that bit them. Or we read chick-lit, which can be fun too.

Linda (Life is Drama) Zern

H is for Hysterical Blindness

-->

One of the hardest parts of the aging process is knowing when “the jig is up.”

It’s important to understand that when a person reaches a certain age, everything starts to hurt: feet, knuckles, muscles, neck, and hair.

True. My hair hurts, but then I wear it in a grandma bun a lot more these days, perhaps part of the problem.

Here’s the dilemma. When everything hurts, how do you know which hurt is vile enough to require a quick call to 911?

I get up in the morning, hit the floor, and proceed to shuffle to the bathroom like a zombie in search of zombie snack food, my feet, legs, knees, and hips protesting loudly.

“Am I dying?” I said to my husband recently, as I shuff-shuffled to the potty.

“Do you want to be?” he asked, answering my question with a question. Still in bed, he was balancing a Pepsi on his stomach as he held a pecan twirl to his lips with his right hand—his version of breakfast. NOTE: He has zero “bad” cholesterol. I’ve had borderline high, bad cholesterol since I was twelve. I live on vegetables and pickle juice. Life is NOT fair.

Two days again, I woke up, got up, hit the floor, and couldn’t see anything. The whole world had gone fuzzy—super fuzzy. “What the what?”

My first thought? Overnight stroke.

Second thought? Hysterical blindness.

My third and final conclusion. Allergies: rectified by allergy drops and a warm wash cloth.

Sigh.

I tell everyone I had hysterical blindness. It makes for a better story, and I’m all about the storytelling.

And so, I shuff-shuffle through life trying to decide if the pain in my hair is bad enough to warrant a lobotomy or a deep tissue search on Web MD.

My oldest daughter went to her doctor with a lump in her wrist which she had pre-diagnosed, after a thorough Google search, as “Viking’s Disease.”

She told her doctor, “I have Viking’s Disease.” Note: Viking’s Disease is a malady effecting Scandinavians. It leaves their hands and fingers weirdly twisted and deformed.

He said, “Good guess. But no . . .”

She had a benign cyst.

My bout with hysterical blindness has taught me a couple of things about health care in America. 1) Care is an interesting word. 2) Unless you’re clawing at your own face or foaming, people are probably more interested in what the English royal family is dissing about each other than your hysterical blindness. 3) Web MD is your doctor’s least favorite website. And 4) Caring about health care is exhausting.

And so, I keep right on shuffling until I can’t anymore, hoping that by the time my jig is up I get struck by lightning.

Linda (Electric Light Parade) Zern