Looking for Love Under the Merge Sign

Looking for Love Under the Merge Sign

(Warning PG – 13 Due to Racy Rooster Talk)

A professor asked the college class, “Who decides if a baby is a boy or a girl?”

One bright young thing piped up and said, “Society.”

After my son related this fascinating tale of modern American education, I walked out to my chicken coop and watched as my thirteen roosters commenced to crow, spur, posture, fight, flap, peck, and gang rape their way through my flock of hens.

“Who told you, you were roosters,” I yelled.

I sold twelve of the thirteen roosters to my next-door neighbor for six dollars and fifty cents a piece. He got a bargain. My hens got some relief, and I learned a lesson about the nature of the species. Roosters do not lay eggs.

According to a recent scientific (so it must be good) study men think about sex 2,072 times every second of every minute of every day—girls, not so much, but this is, of course, because of rigid social conditioning and that poem about snips, snails, and puppy dog tails.

Personally, I’m glad my mother did not socialize me to be a boy so that I would have to think about sex constantly. I occasionally enjoy thinking about—oh I don’t know . . . breakfast or the Civil War.

When my husband was born, his mother, fooled by his resemblance to a rooster, socialized him to be a boy, which means that when he became a teenager he enjoyed riding naked on motorcycles through the Florida back woods, but not to worry; he likes to point out he always wore tennis shoes so that he could shift and to protect his feet.

Now my husband (of thirty-one years) flies away to various locations around the globe on Sunday afternoon and gets home on Thursday nights, and I used to pick him up at the airport, my heart filled with that little frisson of happiness and excitement that accompanied the notion of my man coming home from the sea. I was always glad to see him—for about five minutes, and then he would talk. I make him take a taxi now.

While coming home from the airport, trying to merge into a steady stream of traffic, and not get us crushed under a shuttle bus, I would often say, “I’m so glad you’re home, honey.”

A noise not unlike the sound of pizza being digested would greet this announcement.

“So how was your week? How was your flight? See anyone interesting in the airport like Caesar Milan?”

Silence. Silence. Quiet and then more and a bigger silence and

then . . .

“Let’s get it on,” he would say.

“What?” My hands would clench convulsively on the steering wheel. “Should I pull off the road next to the palm tree or do you want to wait until we pass the merge sign, and please tell me this isn’t your idea of romance?”

The conversation often deteriorated from there.

What I want to know is who told my husband he was a rooster?

I’d like to thank them, because after thirty-one years, four kids, and seven grandchildren he’s still crazy about me. What can I do? We’re just getting to the good part and I, for one, am glad that roosters do not lay eggs.

Linda (Henny Penny) Zern

Worser and Worser

“It could be worse.” It’s what people say when something truly icky happens in your life, and it’s supposed to 1) make you feel better because other people feel worse or 2) make you feel worse because it highlights what a big whiney baby you are. It’s kind of like a game, a game that you never, ever want to win.

When folks show up at the hospital, take one look at you, cross themselves (and they’re not Catholic) and say, “Holy smokes, it could NOT be worse,” then you have lost the game.

For us the “it could be worse” game often involves insect life—often termites.

We put our first house on the market and two weeks later termites flew out of the load-bearing-holding-up-the-ancient-aqueduct wall.

The next house we put on the market the termites waited a month to do their thing. As I remember it, the termites boiled out of our wood frame house in an Egyptian plague cloud while the realtor was parading potential buyers through it.

Okay, it’s not the worst thing that could happen, but it is spooky in a coincidental, paranoid curse of the insect wood eaters kind of way. So, we must conclude it could be worse. And here’s how:

1. The termites could have flown out of the attic of our house after eating their way through the foundation, stairs, television, and picture frames. Instead they flew out of the bottom. It could have been worse.

2. The termites could have been some new, freak industrial clone bugs, capable of eating an average size house in under eight hours, so that when we got home from work we would be greeted by a pile of sawdust and a microwave. (We lived pretty close to a nuclear power plant at the time. It could have happened.)

3. The termites could have been glowing and looking for human orifices to colonize.

4. The termites could have been armed with flame-throwers.

5. The termites could have been followed by a troop of termite eating monkeys, who would now be living in the bushes, hunting termites, throwing poo, and looking for humans to jeer. Monkeys, I am informed, are disgusting.

6. The termites could have been flesh eating.

See how fun and helpful this little exercise can be? Before you know it you’re counting your blessings, calling the exterminator, and toasting your good fortune that the termites are now swarming away from your house and towards your neighbor’s house with the really big dog that likes to come to your house looking for monkeys and to take a dump in your driveway.

But it could be worse; your neighbors could own a rhino.

Linda (Big Whiney Baby) Zern

Sherwood's Olympic Struggles

“He needs to get his blade on the ice.”

Looking over at Sherwood, my dearest husband of more than thirty years, I tried to decide if he had one or two chocolate donuts in his mouth.

“Get your blade on the ice,” he yelled at the television through chocolate glaze and donut dust.

I squinted over my glasses at the Olympic speed skaters gliding around and around in a frenzy of bad posture and arm swinging.

“Sherwood, you’ve never speed skated in your entire life.” He ignored this fundamental reality.

“Dig, dig, dig!” he yelled. “He’s going to loose if he doesn’t dig.” He punctuated his coaching acumen by pushing a half empty bag of chocolate covered donuts back under the bedspread. It’s possible he thought they would cook better under there.

“You mean, “dig” with their skates and not shovels, right?”

He gave me the look.

Later, as skiers flew down an icy mountainside he offered up this observation.

“She’s going to be way off the mark if she keeps coming out of her tuck that way.” He was snacking on Swiss Cake Rolls and Pepsi by this time.

I drew the line when he started to coach the curlers on the most advantageous amount of bend to have in their knees to properly push the big-frozen-boulder-thing down the shuffleboard court made of ice.

“Sherwood! Stop right now. You must stop. You must. You do not know the first thing about speed skating, alpine skiing, or curling, which, I happen to know, you do not even consider a real sport.”

“What?” He look offended and a little hurt.

“You! You become the coach of all sports when the Olympics comes on.”

He pulled a bag of Doritos from underneath his pillow, shrugged, and said, “You and I ice skated that time in Ottawa, and Adam and I went skiing that time in West Virginia.”

“And you pointed, hooted, and laughed your butt off when you were on the ski lift, and you saw some poor kid crash, burn, and roll down the hill underneath you like a bag of spilled marbles,” I reminded him.

“So?”

“That kid was your kid. It was Adam. That’s it. That’s the sum total of your winter sports expertise.”

We looked at the television as music swelled, while they played one of those montages where lithe, athletic young men and women raced, spun, and sailed across the screen into glory and history. I reached for my husband’s grease smeared hand as our National Anthem played.

“It is inspiring.” I blinked hard to hold back sentimental tears.

“You’re right,” Sherwood said, thoughtfully. “So, you know what, I’m thinking that from now on, when I eat Swiss cake rolls I’m only going to drink water.”

I patted his hand.

“Way to go, coach.”

I haven’t actually seen my husband follow through on his training regiment yet, but the year is still young and the summer Olympics are on their way. You should hear him yell advice to those women shot putters.

Linda (Finish Line) Zern