A
Semi-Annual,
Once
in a While,
End
of the Year Inventory and Personal Disclaimer
I was born feet first, making
me one of the last breach babies delivered the old-fashioned way, feet first.
My mother was happy to tell me that in some primitive cultures I would have
been left on a slab of granite and fed to the dingoes. It gave me an unnatural
fear of kitchen counters and other flat surfaces.
My mother smoked while she was
pregnant with me on the advice of her doctor. And that fact gave me a healthy skepticism
of fads, popular opinion, and common knowledge. Weren’t lobotomies all the
scientific rage at one time?
Some of the things important
for you to know about me are:
1.
I seriously don’t care if you want to dress up
like a blue pony and whinny at the neighbors. Seriously.
2.
I’m short. I have endured songs in popular
culture deriding my shortness, people patting me on the head like a cocker
spaniel, and sleeves that are always three inches too long.
3.
I’m an author. I have published books. I was a
writer, which is a person that writes a lot of stuff: grocery lists, journal
entries, emails, etc, but now I am an author. And that’s different.
4.
You should know that I am a conservative. I have
sixteen grandchildren. I cannot afford to have one or any of them living in my
garage, smoking dope for a living.
5.
My dog is old. She and I have the same hair
color. Watching her become decrepit is like watching myself die.
6.
I’ve been married to the same man for forty-one
years. We’ve listened to each other tell the same jokes and stories for
forty-one years, and yet we still listen. That my friends is love.
7.
I am religious. I find it’s always good to know
which of the ten commandments people object to most, because then I’ll know
whether to hide my husband or my purse.
8.
Words come easily. Numbers come almost not at
all, or as I like to say that I have a hole in my head where the numbers should
be.
9.
Horses are my favorite animal because you can’t
ride on dogs.
10. I’ve
been going to college for twenty years and with any luck I will never graduate.
11. I
want them to write on my tombstone: She taught her children to read.
12. When
the grandchildren come to stay they say that we live on a farm and that our
house is full of “back-then” stuff.
13. One
of my favorite children’s book is “Mistress Masham’s Repose” by T. H. White. From
the blurb: “Think to yourself, truly:
would you return a live one-inch baby to its relatives, if caught fairly in the
open field?”
14. The
best movie of all time is Strictly Ballroom because “A life lived in
fear is a life half lived.”
15. I
write fiction which is non-fiction without the non, so be warned that not everything
you read is true or non, but it doesn’t have to be if it’s fiction.
16. And
so I disclaim, once again.
Linda (Scribble On) Zern
