I WONDER . . .

Thirteen years ago, I stood in the library of Wake Tech Community College as a representative of my anthropology class. I was to report back on the news reports about the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

As the first tower fell, I heard someone behind me mutter, “Good. America deserves this. America is in everyone’s business.”

I turned around and looked into the face of a handsome, young, well-dressed, African American man and saw . . . the future.

Over the years, I’ve often thought about that young man and wondered where he is now, what he thinks, and if he ever paid back his student loans.   

Yokel at the Museum

While visiting the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, I saw one of the security guards go into hunting dog, alert mode. His ears pricked up. His spine snapped to attention. His hand moved to his walkie-talkie. The guard looked like a redbone hound dog flushing a covey of bobwhite quail. The molecules in his skin were standing at attention.

Someone, somewhere in the museum was breaking the rules.

“Boy oh boy,” I said to my daughter. “Some out-of-town yokel has really biffed it.” Then I pointed.

We watched the security guard stalk the rule-breaking yokel, while standing in the Greek and Roman statue garden, surrounded by centuries of priceless antiquities. It was possible to become faint from sniffing all the odor of fragile history that swirled about.

My daughter gasped. “That guard’s not after some out-of-town yokel. He’s after Dad.”

This next part happened in that weird slow motion that kicks in when airplanes crash or the grandkids tumble off the furniture.

At the sound of her gasping shock, I turned (slowly) to see my wonderful husband of thirty plus years leaning against the bust of The Goat God of Ithaca.

He had his elbow in the empty eye socket of an irreplaceable piece of irreplaceable Greek goat god statue history. He was talking on his cell phone—my husband, not the goat guy.

“Noooooo! Sherwoooooooood! What are you thinking?” I yelled. My voice echoed through the statue garden like the ghost of an ancient goat.

The security guard honed in for the kill.

I thought about shielding my spouse by throwing my body in front of the lecture on proper museum etiquette that was about to happen. But when I saw him stick his finger in his free ear to block out the sound of Captain Security Guard saying, “Sir, don’t lean on the priceless art,” and “No cell phone calls in the museum,” I reconsidered that ultimate sacrifice.

And while the above is a direct quote, there was subtext. There’s always subtext. I believe that subtext ran something along the lines of, “Listen up, you hillbilly, I don’t care what swamp you crawled out of, but you wouldn’t know a piece of priceless art if it bit you on your hillbilly butt. And if you leave your hillbilly grease on my marble, I’ll shoot you myself.”

Horrified, my daughter and I melted away into the gift shop and pretended to buy a pair of vintage inspired Egyptian earrings. Let the yokel fend for himself. However, before ditching hillbilly Sherwood, I took a snapshot of my husband’s encounter with the security guard. There was a quick flash of light.

“Lady,” another alert security type said, “there’s no flash photography in the museum.”

The picture turned out great.

Then the camera got stolen.

Linda (Tour Guide Down) Zern

Sweet Honesty Just Happened to Me

I call it the romance novel philosophy of life. “We didn’t plan for IT to happen. IT just happened.” IT, of course, in a romance novel, means wild, crazed, uncontrollable, life shattering sexiness that cannot be resisted—thus uncontrollable or not my fault sex, people.

Because . . . there HE was, pillaging the local village, lunchroom, or corporate office, and then I looked at HIM and BAM, I was swept away by chemicals called fair-moans . . . oops . . . sorry . . . I mean pheromones which are chemicals located in human sweat—also glands, taste buds, and nose hairs.

What? If people can blame their chemical sweat for their entire lives just happening to them without conscious choice or thought, I can make up nutty crap about it.

People really believe this stuff. The government funds scientific studies about it. It’s called “Sweat Chemicals Made Me Do IT” research.

I know that people believe this. I’ve heard them talk about it in a public place for smarty-pants, you know, college. (What follows is a story I’ve told once or twice but bears repeating.)

My anthropology professor asked my college class, “Who thinks that falling in love is a result of chemicals you can’t control?”

Every hand went up but two.

“Who thinks that falling in love is a choice?”

Two hands went up. The professor’s and mine.

I shouted, “Seriously?”

One young thing complained, “But it’s so unromantic if it’s not spontaneous. I just want to be walking down the street and BAM! There he is.”

“But what if he’s a tax evading, nose picking, axe murderer and republican?” I asked.

She blinked big doe shaped eyes and shivered.

Unromantic? I’ll tell you what’s unromantic—three kids with four daddies and utter exhaustion and flip-flops. Those things are not romantic.

Come on! Think! If this theory holds, then you could be walking down some random street, see some random monkey male of our species, and your chemicals called fair-moans scream out, “Mate.”

And you do mate. 

I asked my husband why he asked me to Homecoming all those many years ago in high school and did it have to do with uncontrollable chemical signals, and he said, “I thought you were pretty.”

I said, “Good answer.”

“And you were always wearing that T-shirt that read, SWEET HONESTY.”

“Yeah, that was my perfume. Avon makes it. I still wear Sweet Honesty,” I paused. “Oh no! I . . . still . . . wear . . . it.”

“So?”

“It’s the perfume! You’ve stuck it out for thirty-five, work grinding, midnight baby shuffling, soul searing, mind blowing years, because of the perfume.”

He looked at me like I had lost part of my mind and misplaced the rest.

Then he said something stupid.

So I said, “I tell you what. I’ll tell you what to say and then you say it and then I’ll write it down like you said it.”
He said, “Shoot.”

“Say this, ‘You’re the best time I’ve ever had.’”

He said it.

And that’s how I know it can’t be the chemicals that keep the love train rolling. It has to be “love by choice.” Otherwise, I’d marry myself because I know what I want to hear—also smell.


Linda (Sniff It) Zern