GUZZLE

Our one-year old granddaughter tried drinking water out of a plastic bottle for the first time by wrapping her lips around the opening, throwing her head back like a college student on spring break, and chugging harder then a drunken sailor. Water exploded over her head. Forgetting to un-tip the bottle as she pulled it away from her mouth, water gushed down her chin to cascade like a waterfall over her dress until it soaked her socks.

“Hey, I drink water just like that!”

 It’s always exhilarating when you recognize yourself in the rising generation.

 “I know, and it’s horrible.”  My husband sounded forlorn and a little sad as he stumbled away from our extremely damp granddaughter. Avoiding direct eye contact he seemed less than impressed with my connection to our posterity.

Grabbing a bottle of water that advertised being pumped from the bowels of a fresh water spring located under Mount Olympus and decanted into a plastic bottle designed by a computer, I threw my head back and guzzled, throat convulsing. Water squirted from my nose.

“Linda, do you have to drink water out of a bottle like that?” He grimaced, looking away.

“Like what?”  I swiped the back of my hand across my dripping chin.

“Like you’ll never get another drop of water again for as long as you live—and eternity—like the water bottling industry has just announced that all the water in the world has been teleported to the moon. Seriously, it drives me crazy.”

Tipping the bottle back, I gulped until the sides of the bottle collapsed.

“Like that.  Good grief, woman, take a breath,” he said, clawing at his own throat. “ Why do you throw your head back like that? You drink like you can’t trust gravity to work. Just let the natural elements of the universe help you.”

I let my head drop forward as I gasped for the universal element of oxygen. I had a cramp in my neck.

“I don’t throw my head back.”

 He smirked.  “You throw your head back, wrap your lips around the entire bottle opening, and squeeze the water into your mouth like you’ve just dragged yourself across Death Valley.”  

He picked up a bottle of spring water pumped from the original Fountain of Youth with minerals added for flavor. He prepared to demonstrate.

“Here! Let me show you.”

Then Sherwood Zern, husband, lover, and friend, put his lips daintily to the rim of the bottle, gently flipped his wrist and sipped water while keeping his little finger extended.

I thought he looked like a sissy llama at the watering trough at the zoo, but I had to admit he had a definite flare that I quite possibly—lack.

The problem now is that I’m so self-conscious about the way I drink water from a bottle, I have to hide in the corner at the gym so that all the other sweaty, thirsty water drinkers won’t mock and point. It’s like finding out you can’t dance after a lifetime of dancing in public—a lot—and it makes me wonder what else I can’t do better than a toddler.

Linda (Bottoms All The Way Up) Zern

ALLEGEDLY

The Yard Circle

Watching that Elvis impersonator dude get arrested, interrogated, searched, accused, and observed with a jaundiced eye for possibly whipping up a batch of Ricin in his kitchen made me wonder. What would our neighbors say about us on cable TV if they hauled us off for cooking up crazy crap in a crock-pot?

Allegedly.

See something. Say something.

I’ve been trying to imagine what the neighbors are “seeing” at our place when they peek over our wire field fence, realizing if I said something every time I saw something at my neighbor’s house, I’d have the See-Something-Say-Something folks on speed dial.

I mean how weird does it have to be to qualify as something?

It’s not hard to imagine one of those breathless, throaty cable reporters stuffing a microphone in my next-door neighbor’s face and asking, “So, is it true that the Zern family had some unusual weekend rituals? Allegedly?”

“Rituals, no, but they seemed to be overly found of circling.”

Reporter nods and asks, “Satanic symbols? Hex signs? Crop circles?”

“No. Nothing like that, but when they sit outside in their crappy lawn chairs they always wind up in a circle. But it migrates.”

“What does?” The reporter will look perplexed but intrigued.

“The yard circle. In the summer they circle under that big maple tree, but in the winter they land on the septic tank.” Our neighbor gets tired of pointing and drops his hand.

“And did you see that as an indication that they were cooking up crazy crap in a crock-pot.”

Hesitating, my neighbor will scratch his head. “No. But those grandkids are constantly peeing on stuff.”

There it is. Public urination and yard circles.  Our family would be good for at least a charge of felony mischief.

But that’s not as bad as what goes on at our next-door neighbor’s house.  Allegedly.

Our neighbor’s eight-year old son informed my daughter that on Sundays his family likes to practice “knifing.”

She asked, “What’s knifing?”

“You know,” he said, “when you make a target and practice throwing knives at it.”

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that our family is way behind on its knifing practice. Don’t tell.

Linda (Don’t Look. Don’t Tell.) Zern

  

DIVERSITY MUCH?

During the festival of Eid this year, our Moroccan neighbors rented a bouncy house, enjoyed carnival games, and slaughtered forty farm animals (assorted goats, sheep, and three cows.) We enjoyed our neighbor’s festival from the comfort of our lawn chairs under the live oak tree in our backyard.

I for one, appreciated experiencing a slice of Morocco without having to travel to Morocco, but that’s our neighborhood for you. It’s stuffed full of diversity.

The festival of Eid celebrates the end of Ramadan and is as close to a hoot-a-nanny as you can get without being either a hoot or a nanny. Celebrating Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac, goats and sheep are butchered to honor the sparing of Isaac when God provided a “ram in a thicket” (see the book of Genesis in that big book called The Bible.)

There’s a lot of talk of diversity at Rollins College where I go to school. We speak of it. We debate it. We celebrate it. We swim in it. But until you’ve listened to your neighbors bone sawing their way through forty animal carcasses you’ve only dreamed of a universe full of the diverse; you’ve never lived next to it.

Grab a lawn chair and come on over if you want the real experience.

Daughter #1 pulled her lawn chair up next to mine and asked, “What’s happening now?”

“Not much. The traffic jam on Kissimmee Park Road of folks coming with coolers and gunnysacks has eased off and everyone seems to be settling in to party down.”

“What’s that sound?”  The air rang with the energetic sounds of whirring blades.

“The bone saw.”

“Well, I’ll be,” she murmured, popping the top of a Coke.

“Hang on,” I instructed, leaning to my left, her right.  “Check that kid out that just dropped his Igloo cooler.”

She leaned forward. “Which one?”

“Right there. The cooler on the ground, see it? The one with the haunch of beast that just rolled out.”

“Sure enough,” she said. “What is that? A leg? A rump? A pot roast?”

“Not sure, but it’s absolutely got a hoof hanging off of it. Pass the popcorn,” I said.

A good time was had by all.  

Mr. Abe, our neighbor, asked me later if their festival of butchery bothered us at all. I told him, “Nope. There’s a reason we don’t live in a sub-division with a homeowner’s association.  It’s your property and your goats and your bone saw. Slaughter away.”

He gave us a goat in appreciation. The goat was alive. We took it. And that, my friends, is diversity in all its undiluted purity.

Linda (Neighborhood Watch) Zern