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  

      

   

PUBLISHED @ HUMORPRESS.COM (MORE SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION)

Hair Of The Dog
By Linda L. Zern, Florida

My husband and I got rid of our kids the old fashioned way. We swaddled them, wiped them, smothered them, adored them, bossed them, and then firmly and finally kicked them out. They went. It was too late. We were addicted to the swaddling, wiping, smothering, adoring, and bossing. We were addicted to the caring—so we got a dog.

The dog arrived just as the kids escaped. She was free, adorable, and covered in hair. That dog and the fur coat she came wrapped in was proof positive that my husband and I had lost what little equilibrium we had managed to cobble together over the years. Just as our home had become clean, comfortable, and hypoallergenic, we filled it with a mammal that shed the equivalent of sixteen angora sweaters per lunar cycle. She’s a hair explosion. We adapted.

We started buying lint rollers in case lots from a start-up company in Indonesia. We qualified for the large quantity discount and the company Christmas card. Our account rep’s name is Omja; it’s a name that means, “born of cosmic unity.”

Last night my husband cracked open a new case of lint rollers and then pointed out that we were closing in on our thirty plus year wedding anniversary. He was trying to be romantic, but I got distracted by a tumbleweed of dog hair as it drifted languidly through the air in front of my nose. Waving a lint roller like a road flare, I expertly whipped floating fur from the air.

“Hold still,” he said, and with a flick of his wrist ran a lint roller down the back of my Winnie the Pooh pajamas.

I trembled and jumped a bit. It was hard to tell if the ‘old spark’ was still there, or I if was being electrocuted by a mix of sticky tape and static cling. Either way, I felt my innards flip-flop and my neck hair crackle.

“Sorry, I thought—you know—the shedding.” He gave me a half grin and a shrug. “There was dog hair on your . . . back parts.”

I watched a single hair drift and settle onto the top of his skull. Nodding, I rolled his head, noting how much white hair belonged exclusively to him now and not on the dog’s butt. Where had the time gone?

Climbing into bed, my husband lint-rolled his pillow and then mine, while I ran a lint roller across the part of the bedspread that catches our chin drool. In tandem, we ripped fur clogged sticky strips free from our matching rollers, wadded them into clingy balls, and tossed the wads over our shoulders.

“Honey, have I told you that the last thirty plus years have been,” I said, pausing, as another errant tuft of fur floated by, “a thousand kinds of fun.” I watched it settle and then drift like snow across the bedspread. I flashed on the image of a snowman wearing the shaggy coat of a mixed breed Golden Retriever with a dash of Boarder Collie. I chuckled softly.

Smiling his special smile at my apparent good humor, my husband ran his lint roller down the front of my Winnie the Pooh pajamas. I giggled. A dog hair stuck in my lip balm, making my lip itch. Lint rolling my upper lip, I returned his special smile with my own special smile.

Just as he leaned in to kiss me goodnight, our sixty-pound canine hair factory vaulted onto the bed and shook. Dog hair showered down like dandelion seeds in May. We lint rolled each other’s faces. Pushing in between us the dog flipped onto her back, burped a burp that smelled vaguely of plastic wrap, shoved her four legs skyward, and fell asleep in a puddle of her own shedding.

“A thousand kinds of fun,” I repeated, quietly.

We tapped our lint rollers together. They stuck. We left them that way all night.

Now that’s love born of cosmic unity.