A Good Guy in a Jam

When I tell the college kids at school I’ve been married for thirty-two years, they always ask the same thing. “To the same man?”

“Yep! And he’s Superman, and I can’t help it that he’s crazy about me.”

Not only is he crazy about me, he’s a good man to have on the other end of the cell phone if you’re stuck in the Central Florida version of a Greek tragedy—an Interstate # 4 traffic jam—a seven mile long, bumper to bumper, I-4 traffic jam and car carnival of futility and abandoned well of hissing fossil fuels.

The announcer with the sound of chopper blades beating in the background raised the warning voice over the radio, “Do not get on I-4! From John Young to the state of New Hampshire I-4 is a solid block of petrified traffic. Do not get on I-4! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT GET ON I-4.”

“Noooooooooooo!”

I was on the on-ramp to I-4 as the announcement faded into the sound of the emergency broadcast system. Too late, my bumper introduced itself to the bumper in front of me and my fifty-minute commute turned into a two and half hour Gitmo ordeal.

I called my husband of thirty-two years in Detroit where he works for OnStar the GPS service of General Motors. How’s that for irony?

“Babe, where am I?”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Can’t talk now, a plumber in a plumbing truck is trying to get my attention with hand gestures and tonnage rights.”

Click.

I called him back. “Sherwood! Where am I now?”

He hesitated, suspecting another one of my wifely pop quizzes. Over the years I’ve developed a system of stealth pop quizzes designed to measure my husband’s girl savvy. In thirty-two years, the only pop quizzes of mine Sherwood has ever passed have dealt with sex.

“Linda, I never had that GPS tracker implanted in your skull. I have no idea where you are now.”

“There’s a Holy Land on my left and a Target on my right. Some might make the argument that the Holy Land and Target represent the same thing.”

“Still not sure.”

“Gotta go. We’ve started to creep.”

Click.

Forty minutes later, I called him back. “If I get off at Amelia Street, how lost am I going to get?”

“Very,” he said.

Click.

From the traffic jam, I ricocheted a final signal off a satellite in space to my husband in Michigan.

“Okay, here’s the deal. I’m getting off at Par Street, but I can’t remember how to get from Par to Fairbanks. Can you Google it for me?”

He sighed and said, “Yep!” And just like a spy handler at the CIA he steered me through the morass of steaming vehicles, screaming drivers, and reckless plumbing trucks and got me from Par to Fairbanks, and I wasn’t even late for my Crime Fiction Writing Workshop, which Sherwood likes to think of as a kind of super expensive ceramics class.

He’ll sing a different tune when I finally figure out where I am, and how to make money writing crime fiction ceramics.

But that’s my husband for you; when I’m not sure where I am or how lost I’m about to get he’s there. He’s the guy with the Google.

He’s the voice in my ear. He’s the calm for my storm. He’s the fire in my heart.

He’s Superman, and he’s crazy about me. But then I’m crazy about him too; what can you do?

Happy anniversary, Babe.

Linda (Superman’s Girlfriend) Zern

My Annual, Semi-Yearly, Bicentennial Disclaimer

I’ve spent the last two hours goofing around on the Internet, and I noticed that **real authors have a page on their websites called FAQ. I believe this may stand for Formal Advanced Quizzes, Forces Against Quips, or Frequently Asked Question. Because I am an author and a writer, this disclaimer will be written in the form of a FAQ.

Q: Are your weekly “essays” fiction, non-fiction, or creative non-fiction?

A: Yes!

RA (Real Answer): I would call my weekly postings creative non-fiction, which is the truth dressed up to go to a party in a paper dress.

Q: Isn’t your family tired of having their every wart and ear hair examined in public and chortled over by tens of dozens of your fans via your writing?

A: Yes!

RA: Not at all, as long as I pay them a dollar every time I mention their names.

Q: How long have you been scribbling your thoughts down in written form?

RA: For as long as I’ve had thoughts—eleven years.

Q: Tell us a little about yourself and who would play you in the movie?

RA: I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL YAYA to Zoe, Conner, Emma, Sadie, Kipling, Zachary, and Reagan. Debbie Reynolds should play me in the movie if she had been born after me, instead of before me.

Q: What’s the worst thing about being a writer?

A: Yes!

RA: Sitting on my butt for hours and hours and hours. Writing is fun for my brain. ***Zumba is fun for my butt.

Q: What’s been the strangest feedback on your work?

A: My sister-in-law holding my first manuscript in her hands said, “That’s a lot of words.” She refused to read it. And a young man recently questioned my use of a llama in my crime fiction story.

RA: I don’t have a llama in my crime fiction story.

Q: Can we be done?

A: Yes!

Sincerely, Linda (Llama Lover) Zern

**Real authors are just writers whose words come conveniently wrapped inside the covers of a book, otherwise they’re still just writers.

***Zumba is a Latin based exercise requiring the excessive and repeated use of one’s butt and hips. I’m the best one in my class. No really, I am.

Barnacle Babe

Barnacle Babe

I’ve learned two important facts in my creative fiction writing class. I’m an idiot, and all my favorite authors are dead. When did that happen? About the dead author part, it’s possible I’ve always been an idiot.

It’s a strange paradox of life that by the time you have something interesting to say, you’re half way to dead and other weird stuff starts happening to you. For example:

(Unexplained Hair Loss) – Parts of my face have started to disappear. My eyebrows are missing. I have to draw my eyebrows on my head with a stencil and a crayon. If I don’t draw eyebrows on my head I look like Queen Elizabeth (not this Queen Elizabeth but that other Queen Elizabeth with no eyebrows.)

(Excess Face) – Not only are my eyebrows missing but when I bend over to pick up my eyebrow crayon, my face slides off my skull bones. It’s creepy. I’ve never had so much excess face. I used to be able to hang upside down on the monkey bars for a long time and my chins never fell over my eyes, blinding me.

(Unexplained Hair Growth) – I don’t want to talk about, but just remember that we all get hairy in the end.

(Memory Loss) – I can’t remember the color of my hair. I know it’s not the color of the girl’s hair on the box. But what color is it? What kind of person can’t remember the color of their own hair?

(Barnacle Growth) – I get up in the morning and look in the mirror and say, “What the heck is that growing on my head/neck/chest/eyelid/entire body? It wasn’t there yesterday, and where are my eyebrows?”

(Smart Aleck Doctor’s Comments) – “Oh don’t worry about that bump, lump, mound, or pimple. It’s a barnacle. You’ve been in the water too long.”

(Clock Confusion) – I’ve started to go to bed before the chickens but not to sleep. It’s so people can’t find me, and I can write down all the interesting things I have to say, after having lived long enough to actually have something interesting to say.

According to my creative writing teacher, “If you aren’t writing to make money you’re an idiot.” That makes me an idiot with barnacles and no eyebrows. Could be time to dry dock.

Linda (High Tide) Zern