Throwing Down

Understanding the eternal unrest in the Middle East has always been a challenge for me, until this weekend. I have seen for myself how the world can spiral out of control as quick as a monkey can fling poo. And I’m only sort of kidding.

First of all, there were a few superficial similarities between our family beach vacation dust-up and the kettle of fish that is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict: both have a lot of sand and both occur in a confined space. Sure. Sure. The Israeli/Palestinian kettle of fish is as old as sand, and the entire world teeters in the balance at its outcome, and our “dust-up” was just kind of goofy. Still, there are lessons to be learned . . . lessons to be learned.

The Set-Up: Zoe (10) and Sadie (5) played happily on the balcony of our room overlooking the Hilton hotel pool. The air was salty. The ocean foamy. The girls were probably playing mermaids who ride unicorns or unicorns that wish they were mermaids who ride unicorns.

The Others: Below a family—mommy, baby, various other sorts—lounged by the pool, smoked by the pool, scratched various body parts by the pool. 

The Provocation: From high above, out of the fine Florida sky ice fell—hotel ice, chunks of manmade and unnatural hotel ice—bouncing next to the baby and causing an inter-hotel incident.

The First Salvo: Looking up, the baby’s mother saw the mermaid balcony girls prancing about, jumped to conclusions, aimed her verbal missiles at the two girls, and let fly. Those girls threw that ice and tried to hit her baby. She KNEW it.

The Escalation: Zoe, pale as a unicorn’s horn, fell into hysterics and terror. “That lady thinks we tried to hurt her baby. She’s going to call the police. She yelled at us. We didn’t do anything. Arrrrrrggggg.” Tears poured. Hysteria clamped sharp claws around her heart.

The United Nations Tie-In: Zoe’s mother and grandmother closely question the balcony girls, examine the evidence, and stare down at the pool loungers with varying degrees of evil eye. The loungers grab up a hotel official, count off the room where they assume the ice chuckers dwell and sic security on room # 803, registered to grandfather Sherwood Zern and tribe.

Rising Tensions: Grandfather watching beloved granddaughter fall into tiny, shredded pieces stormed from the room declaring, “I’m going down to talk to those Philistines.”

The Peace Talks: In the elevator, grandfather, going down, ran into hotel official, coming up, and talks ensued.

Meanwhile: Anger and frustration grew as evidenced by the balcony grandmother yelling, “Children prepare to fling poo.”

Double Meanwhile: The pool loungers below scowled up, pointed at, and gestured towards the balcony dwellers, preparing to fling poo of their own.

The Truth of It: While the mother and grandmother debated raiding the mini-bar for teeny-tiny bottles of alcohol to make teeny-tiny Molotov-cocktails, the true and actual ice-chucking culprits (the Hamas family) one floor up and directly above, dumped a bucket of water on the balcony dwellers of room #803 below.

The Irony: The pool loungers did not witness the stealth attack and continued to blame the mermaid girls and their unicorn family high on the balcony above.

And then we went to lunch at McDonalds.

A couple of lessons learned: hotel ice melts before you can dust for fingerprints; people are sure they are right; ice water is cold; misunderstandings are rampant; escalating a conflict is easy; McDonalds serves gross food that resembles poo; Zoe and Sadie didn’t do it.

Linda (General Molotov) Zern 

THAT'S SO NICE

Barnacles!

I don't need end of life counseling from Dave the Desk Sitting bureaucrat. I already have an end of life plan that involves the Gulf Stream, a boat, and a superficial understanding of sailing. 

According to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence or NICE – the United Kingdom’s Version of A Death Panel—figuring out if Granny is worth the cash necessary to keep her hip from falling off is easy. There’s a formula. 

. . . by taking the cost of treatment and dividing it by the years gained an overall cost benefit ratio can be determined as the ‘cost per quality – adjusted life year gained’ or CQG.

That is a direct quote taken straight from literature written by NICE!!!! I can’t make this up. 

See those letters—CQG—you know what that is? I know what it is. It’s algebra. They are using algebra to figure out if it’s worth it to keep me in watery Jell-O and estrogen patches.

It’s the hated, evil creepiness of algebra as it pertains to the lump on my personal arm, my health care, and the fact that the women of my family live for absolutely ever and ever. My great-grandmother was climbing farm fences at the age of ninety-one, because she couldn’t see well enough to find the gates. So if you calculate my “cost per quality—adjusted life year gained” I could cost the “collective good” more money to insure than two or three hundred homeless potheads in Colorado.

It’s algebra. It’s math. And you can’t argue with algebra, math, or the people at NICE. 

My DNA lives forever. It’s horrible. I have barnacles, because it’s a pure fact that if the boat sits in the water long enough, it’s going to get barnacles and require dry docking and scraping. I have barnacles. I’m a big-ticket item—health care wise.

So here’s how my CQG, if I lived in England, would go. My age (fifty-plus) multiplied by my genetic propensity for eternal life, divided by the number of scars on my person from malicious cancer (a bunch—also more than a pirate) over the coefficient of the number of barnacles found on the average rowboat bobbing off the coast of any Bahamian island equals—pull the plug already.

I told my doctor that if any future barnacle lumps turn out to be a malignant anything, then I’m renting a sail boat, sailing into the Gulf Stream, and jumping off the back.

She said, “That’s kind of extreme; don’t you think? And why the Gulf Stream?”

“Because the Gulf Stream is warm. I don’t do cold, and besides I’d like to donate my share of the universal health care pie to someone with less barnacles—also I believe in life, without barnacles, after death.”

"I'll have the front desk schedule your surgery."

"Nice!" I said.

And now that America has decided to go the way of all the other cool countries with death panels, I think we should call our death panel either:

SWELL—Seeing Ways to Eliminate Little Old Ladies or 

GULF—Giving Up on Leftover Folks.


Linda (NICE is as NICE does) Zern

Lying to the End

According to a special documentary on “body language” over ninety percent of all human communication is non-verbal. 

(As I type this, my shoulders are very pinched and close to my ears.)

Everyone lies.  I am told that this is true, because people have seen it on a t-shirt and a fictional character on television repeats it a lot. 

(At this point, my lips are pursed, emphasizing the fine lines and fissures into which my lipstick tends to pour.)

Therefore, if everyone lies and ninety percent of communication is non-verbal then forget about what’s coming out of people’s lips and concentrate on what’s happening between their eyes. 

(A wrinkle shaped like a cavern just deepened near my left eye.)

I hate lying. I love liars. 

(My right eye is twitching so hard I can hear it.)

That is a lie. I don’t love liars. I try to love liars in the “love the sinner, hate the sin” way, but it’s hard, because liars tend to lie, and they can’t be trusted with your automobiles, wallet, lawn mower, good name, daughters, or your female cat, and she’s been spayed. I continue to try to love liars, but it’s a struggle.

No, it’s not a struggle; that’s a lie. It’s more like a wrestle—Greco/Roman style. 

Liars are exhausting, because you have to listen to them lying and “read” their body language all at the same time. Or if you’re not around when the liar is lying then you have to hire someone to watch the liar lie, and if you live in a particularly dishonest society, eventually you will run out of people, to watch the people, who are supposed to be watching the people—in case the people are lying or plagiarizing or faking important governmental reports.

(See?  It’s exhausting.)

 So, if it’s true that everyone lies then we’re screwed.

Linda (Telling the Truth Since 1958) Zern