A Semi-Annual, Once in a While, End of the Year Inventory and Personal Disclaimer

A Semi-Annual,

Once in a While,

End of the Year Inventory and Personal Disclaimer

I was born feet first, making me one of the last breach babies delivered the old-fashioned way, feet first. My mother was happy to tell me that in some primitive cultures I would have been left on a slab of granite and fed to the dingoes. It gave me an unnatural fear of kitchen counters and other flat surfaces.

My mother smoked while she was pregnant with me on the advice of her doctor. And that fact gave me a healthy skepticism of fads, popular opinion, and common knowledge. Weren’t lobotomies all the scientific rage at one time?

Some of the things important for you to know about me are:

1.     I seriously don’t care if you want to dress up like a blue pony and whinny at the neighbors. Seriously.

2.     I’m short. I have endured songs in popular culture deriding my shortness, people patting me on the head like a cocker spaniel, and sleeves that are always three inches too long.

3.     I’m an author. I have published books. I was a writer, which is a person that writes a lot of stuff: grocery lists, journal entries, emails, etc, but now I am an author. And that’s different.

4.     You should know that I am a conservative. I have sixteen grandchildren. I cannot afford to have one or any of them living in my garage, smoking dope for a living.

5.     My dog is old. She and I have the same hair color. Watching her become decrepit is like watching myself die.

6.     I’ve been married to the same man for forty-one years. We’ve listened to each other tell the same jokes and stories for forty-one years, and yet we still listen. That my friends is love.

7.     I am religious. I find it’s always good to know which of the ten commandments people object to most, because then I’ll know whether to hide my husband or my purse.

8.     Words come easily. Numbers come almost not at all, or as I like to say that I have a hole in my head where the numbers should be.

9.     Horses are my favorite animal because you can’t ride on dogs.

10.  I’ve been going to college for twenty years and with any luck I will never graduate.

11.  I want them to write on my tombstone: She taught her children to read.

12.  When the grandchildren come to stay they say that we live on a farm and that our house is full of “back-then” stuff.

13.  One of my favorite children’s book is “Mistress Masham’s Repose” by T. H. White. From the blurb:  “Think to yourself, truly: would you return a live one-inch baby to its relatives, if caught fairly in the open field?”

14.  The best movie of all time is Strictly Ballroom because “A life lived in fear is a life half lived.”

15.  I write fiction which is non-fiction without the non, so be warned that not everything you read is true or non, but it doesn’t have to be if it’s fiction.

16.  And so I disclaim, once again.

Linda (Scribble On) Zern