Crimes Against My Humanity

Moon n 1. The natural satellite of the earth, 5. Any disk, globe, or crescent resembling the moon. (Let’s fly to the moon.)

To Moon v 1. The act of smashing your pimply nether regions against the glass of the window of a quickly moving vehicle, on the turnpike. (Mom, that idiot just mooned us; speed up so we can get his license plate number and report him to the authorities.)

Moonstruck n 1. Believing the authorities care.

My daughters and I were assaulted on the turnpike. Do you want the facts of the assault or the resulting trauma?

By the way, the word “assault” means roughly “vulgar things that happen to you without your permission,” or in the Vulgar Latin it means vulgar people without their pants on.

Okay, the facts of the assault. On first glance we were a pretty cute group: Heather was 8.10 months pregnant, Maren was newly engaged, and I had wrinkles older than the combined ages of the assaulters. Whatever the reason, we were picked out of the never-ending stream of turnpike traffic.

Heather recognized that we were being followed by a van full of lunatics (get it—lunatics, lunar, moon) when she said, “Mom, get away from this jerk; he’s about to run us off the road.”

Looking back I noticed we were being followed by a van with its lights on. I could tell the lights were on because they were shining inside my trunk.

“What a lunatic,” I muttered through grinding teeth.

I slowed down so that the lunatic could pass me and get on with his very important life. The lunatic slowed down.

“Mom, switch lanes; he’s not going around,” Maren said, shooting the lunatic dirty looks through the rear window of the car. Her hands were clenched around an imaginary neck. I switched lanes.

He switched lanes.

This disturbed me so much that I tried to shoot him the evil eye through my rear-view window, which caused me to lose focus on the semi-tractor trailer in front of us. I stomped on the brakes. Lunatic boy stomped on his brakes. I changed lanes. He changed lanes. I slowed down. He slowed down. I almost ran off the road. He laughed. I wished for super hero powers like laser beam eyes.

Maren sighed, “Oh good, he’s finally passing.” She sank back into her seat, closing her eyes, exhausted.

Then without warning, Heather screamed, “Oh no, no, no!” She flung her hands up to shield her face. “An enormous, hairy, pimply a**.” Then she clutched her swollen abdomen as if to protect the innocent child within.

I looked at her face and what I saw there will go with me to the grave. The horror! The horror! Well, that and the fact that I’d never heard Heather use the “A” word—ever. It was pretty shocking.

Maren yelled, “Speed up! Let’s catch them. We’ll take pictures of them with our camera phones.”

“And then what? Make posters!” I held the steering wheel steady. “No, face it girls, we were mooned.”

I paused for effect and then said, “You know they could be a van full of sex slavers trying to crash us, steal us, and sell us.”

They both rolled their eyes.

“Let’s go to the mall,” I said.

“To the mall,” Maren chirped.

“To the mall,” Heather moaned.

To the mall,” I concurred.

And away we went to the mall. But be warned, somewhere out there is a van full of sex slavers looking to crash, steal, and sell a likely looking car full of girl types, or just a van full of bored college kids trying to impress each other with their bare-bottomed daring and dash. Either way, they’re lunatics.

Linda (Green Cheese) Zern

  

BOOK OF ZERN - YET ANOTHER CHAPTER

1.     Behold, we doth still tarry in the land of three sides and speak of our travails and triumphs there. In the year in which the Mayans spoke of as “the end of all things,” we doth still prosper, in that our numbers increased and our joy groweth strong.

2       And the begats consisted of both a new grand boy, which was called Griffen, and a new grand girl, which was called Hero. And thus were the numbers of our rising generation brought to nine.

3        And thus we did continue to party much with singing and with dancing and with glow sticks and with the playing of the vinyl records which I, even the YaYa, doth keep and preserve. And the rising generation doth enjoy both “Marching Band Music” and “The Beatles.”

4       Wo unto Poppy, who didst proclaim that the partying had grown too great, for we didst ignore him in his wo, and we didst dance about him while singing “Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang.”

5       And Poppy did ride forth on his horse, Miss Kitty, to practice much with the volunteer mounted posse, so that he might sally forth to apprehend those that did wickedly at “The Loop,” a place of much buying and selling and movie watching and petty theft.

6       And I, even the keeper of the records of my people, did accidently becometh a senior at Rollins College, in the land known as Winter Park. And many were astonished.

7       Even Aric, the eldest, did becometh engaged to one Lauren of Saint Cloud and there was rejoicing and thanks given.

8       In this selfsame year of 2012, Heather and Phillip didst begat Griffen, the last boy of four, in addition to Zoe. And Zoe didst weep when told that she wouldest have yet another brother.

9       In the same way, Maren and T. J. didst bring forth Hero, their second of two daughters, and they didst open a business on Fairbanks which they calleth “The Salon” and they didst become a small business and they didst “build that” themselves, yea after they were blessed by one who is called “rich.”

10    And the youngest of our offspring, even Adam, and his goodly wife Sarah waited with thanksgiving for the third of three daughters to be born unto them. And Emma didst rejoice in a sister in that she didst believe that a brother wouldest be a lot of trouble and wouldest want “to wrestle her up” like unto Zoe’s brothers who didst “wrestle up” all they saw.

11    And thus ended the twelfth year of the twenty-first century and we grew strong in the land of the three sides and we believed that our God did go before us as a pillar of fire, leading us in the way of truth and happiness.    

EXPLAIN AWAY

My husband was in Bahrain. I was at home in Saint Cloud. I was attempting to explain to him, yet again, the nightmarish challenge of being me; I was attempting my explanation through the miracle of a long distance cell phone connection.

“No, no, it’s the television in the bedroom that doesn’t work now.”

“What happened?” he asked.

I could almost see him running his hand through his hair. It’s the gesture my husband makes when he wishes he could turn himself into a earless deep sea squid so he doesn’t have to listen to me.

“I told you. I had to take the VCR from the television in the bedroom and hook it up to the TV on the porch so I can exercise out on the porch and now the television in the bedroom doesn’t work anymore.”

“What VCR? We don’t have a VCR.”

Now that he mentioned it, VCR did sound kind of wrong. I crumpled my eyebrows together and came up with a better name.

“Not VCR then. That machine. You know that movie machine.”

“DVD player?” he offered.

“Okay, whatever.”

“And why did you have to unhook the DVD player inside the house?”

I made a rude noise. “Ugh! I told you! Because the channel changer thingy for the movie machine on the porch is lost and I can’t scroll through my exercise tape so I can’t work out and keep my stupid girlish figure so you won’t leave me for an idiot baby bimbo.”

“Tape?” he asked, feeling his way through my mouse maze of thinking. “We . . . we don’t still have . . . tapes? Do we?”

I switched my cell phone from one sweaty ear to the other sweaty ear.

“Okay, fine, not tapes. Whatever those roundish little record looking things are. Good grief. Try to keep up.”

“DVD’s?”

“Yes. That’s it. I had to unhook the DVD player from the television in the bedroom and hook it up to that hunk of junk television on the porch and now I can’t make the television in the bedroom work because there are a thousand wires going to a million kinds of nowhere. Arrrgggghh.”

“Why can’t you exercise in the bedroom?”

“What? Are you kidding me?  I told you why” I said, thinking that I was pretty sure that I had told him why I couldn’t exercise in the bedroom, probably, maybe  . . . “because the rug scoots when I do jumping jacks and the tile hurts my knees. You know my knees, the knees with the burning in the bone parts knees? Who cares? I want to exercise on the porch. That’s why.”

Then he said that thing that makes me wish that I were a Killer Whale playing with my food by tossing it into the air on the Discovery channel.

“Linda, is the TV plugged in?”

I couldn’t answer him because various teeth were colliding up against each other.

He kept right on going. “Why did you unhook the DVD player again?”

“Because if I don’t exercise soon I will break someone.”

“Don’t you mean something?”

“No.”

Long distance phone calls are tricky. Long distance explanations are challenging. But sometimes, long distances are your best bet when building a happy and healthy marriage.

Linda (High Impact) Zern