Worm Wars

Florida is a semi-tropic, sultry, and exotic state where rain is called liquid sunshine, and the Spanish guy who named it fully expected to find a fountain full of botox. Winter is the season where Floridians put on sweaters and walk fast to their cars. Florida is paradise.

Florida is also wormy.

Big worms, little worms, beggar worms, thief worms. Pinworms are a fun little worm that lay eggs in a part of the body usually associated with sitting, booty dancing—also spanking. Pinworms are party worms that come out at night to . . . well . . . booty dance, also to lay their eggs in a place where the sun don’t shine. Pinworm eggs can be found in dirt, air, shady places, warm mud, and toddlers. It is very easy to “get” pinworms.

I have had pinworms—in MY PERSONAL BOOTY.

I got them from my grubby toddler kids, who were not above eating dirt, licking dirt, bathing with dirt, or painting with poop in dirt. It is very easy to “get” pinworms; as far as I can tell, pinworm eggs lurk absolutely everywhere, including the moon. One semi-tropic, sultry, and exotic Florida evening, I remember sitting straight up in bed and gasping.

“Honey, honey!” I shook my husband’s shoulder. He mumbled something about a goose and then rolled over. I shook harder. “Honey! Wake up!” Panic made my voice shrill. “I’ve got them!!!”

“What! Whaaaat . . . is . . . it?” He rumbled awake. “Do I need the baseball bat?” He scratched his ear and admitted, “I don’t know where it is.”

“Sherwood, listen to me.” The hair on the back of my neck began to creep in sympathy with other parts of me that were just plain creeped out and itching. “I’ve got pinworms. I know it.”

“Should I get the baseball bat?”

“No! Pinworms, man, pinworms,” I grabbed him by his shoulders.” I have them!” I lowered my voice to a raspy gag. “I . . . can . . . feel . . . them . . . moving!”

He grimaced, looking confused and a little frightened.

“What should I do?” I said, imagining creeping, crawling, and nefarious inching with the vividness of a creative writer high on inspiration.

“Find a cork?” His suggestion was so quiet I almost didn’t hear it.

“Listen, Mister, if you don’t watch out, I’ll make you do the “tape test” for pinworms.” He looked suspicious. “That’s right. The tape test, where you take clear tape and press it to the skin of my . . .”

He moaned faintly, while looking faint. His dismay became contagious.

Hysteria clawed its way through my brain as I lunged for the phone and dialed my gynecologist’s emergency number. While waiting for a call from the mean old nurse they make you talk to when you’ve called with an emergency that isn’t really an emergency, I felt a pathologic need to start running in circles. I ran.

“What are you doing?” My husband had found the baseball bat under the bed and cradled it like a baby. He watched me without blinking. “You know you can’t outrun the pinworms, right? They’re along for the ride.”

The phone rang. I stopped running and answered it.

Explaining in a rational calm scream, I yelped, “HELP ME! I have worms!”

The mean old nurse said, “You realize that pinworms are not considered an emergency or life threatening.”

“Maybe I wasn’t clear. I HAVE WORMS IN MY PERSONAL BODY PARTS!”

“Mrs. Zern you have called your gynecologist’s emergency phone number in the middle of the night because you suspect you might have an infestation of Enterobeus Vermikularis,” she sighed. “I’ll call in a prescription in the morning. You’ll live.” The phone clicked off.

The next morning I had to give a speech in front of approximately two hundred of my peers with pinworms still creeping about my person, and I did, in fact, deliver that speech. And that’s why I’m one tough mom, and it’s very hard to rattle me with threats of global warming, global cooling, global annihilation, or global xenomorph attack. I’ve known true horror—and I lived.

Lind (Cork It!) Zern

That's a Shame!

“Is that guy biting that girl’s thigh?” My son pushed a computer screen with a picture of a guy biting a girl’s thigh in front of my face. I squinted. Not only was it a picture of a young man biting a young women’s thigh, I knew the biter boy.

“Don’t you know that guy?” My son began to scroll down to other pictures of the young man in question biting other questionable girl bits.

“Yeah, I know him,” I sighed.

“Didn’t you . . .”

I cut him off. “Yeah, I wrote him a letter of recommendation for the college of his choice . . . so, apparently, he could go to that institution of higher learning and bite girl’s meaty leg parts.”

“Wow!”

I agreed.

“Do people on social networking sites know that we can see them?” My son looked at me with a puzzled frown.

I closed my eyes with visions of thigh biting dancing in my head. “You know; I think it’s kind of like my theory of why people pick their noses in their cars. Glass feels solid, even if it is see-through, and I always want to yell, ‘We can see you!’ But no one ever hears me. Apparently, it’s also sound proof.”

This incident just highlights why writing letters of recommendation can be so problematic, because the world has become a thigh biting, obscene gesture shooting, booby flashing extravaganza, while I still blush when I fill out the forms in the gynecologist’s waiting room.

The blush is off the world’s rose, that’s for sure.

So I have decided that in all future letters of recommendation that I am asked to write I will include the following disclaimer:

What I know of this candidate, student, or potential employee does not include knowledge of: thigh biting photo’s winging their way across the world wide web; strange or twisted philosophies concerning Marxists mass murderers and their views on day care, first names, or the proper running of a gulag; lying to Israeli officials; or superficial tattoos displayed prominently on bits that can be chewed on by boys whose friends are sober enough to hold the camera steady.

I’m not kidding about the blushing part. My gynecologist once looked at my face and neck, his glasses slipping to the end of his nose, and poked my cheek with his finger.

“What’s that?” he asked.

I knew immediately, but I refused to admit to my old-fashioned red-faced shame.

“Are you blushing?” He looked at my fevered cheeks with squinty eyes. “That’s amazing,” he continued. “Nobody blushes anymore.” He poked me again. “Look at that.” He acted like he’d just discovered an extinct species of pigeon nesting on my head.

Sighing, I shrugged and pulled my exam gown closer to my throat, covering my embarrassed shame with a paper towel, wondering who wrote my doctor his letters of recommendation.

I’ve got nothing against public confessionals of guilt to save the taxpayer the expense of a trial, stocks in the town square where you get to throw old veggies at the town bully, and admitting to your most embarrassing self deprecating moments for their humorous uplifting quality, but don’t cry when you—finally and at long last—realize WE CAN SEE YOU and, boy, do you look silly!

Linda (Once Bitten, Twice Shy) Zern

It's Written All Over You

“You’ve got success written all over you,” my anthropology teacher said as she pulled my final exam from my cramping, clenched, nerveless fingers. I keep thinking I’ll get a t-shirt with my anthropology teacher’s last words to me on it.

I love college. Nobody complains when you use hefty pretentious words, and think deep thoughts—out loud and in front of people.

Then I go home and the person with whom I have mixed DNA in the blender of love says, “You gonna fire up that stove any time soon?”

And I say, “I did. Last week. You remember.”

So, I’m going to get another t-shirt that says, “I’m too short to cook,” because I am too short to cook, and my face is way too close to the fire, and I get sparks and grease in my eyes, not to mention all the knives that are involved.

I just wish I had success written all over me, all of the time.

Unfortunately, sometimes I have “Help me! I’m boiling!” written all over me; usually in the middle of the night when I’m sneaking around the house to turn the thermostat down to a temperature approximating permafrost to combat the effects of flashes that are hotter than Mercury.

“Linda, we’ve just chosen you the person most likely to be burned at the stake.” I would rather not discuss the individuals who thought I had this sentiment written all over me. I’ll just call them the grand inquisitors in pointy hats crowd.

Once, in a Tae Kwon Do class, and about the time I was feeling swift, strong, and capable, my body an instrument of confident danger in the face of my enemies—also mean people, the lady behind me tapped me on the shoulder. Randomly, I executed a roundhouse kick at the danger fraught empty air next to her face—sort of.

Eyes narrowing at what she might have mistaken for pointless leg flailing, she said, “I’m not sure if you know this or not but you have a dryer sheet stuck to your back.”

She plucked a dryer sheet from the back of my martial arts uniform and handed it to me. I tucked it into my lovely purple belt and practiced more artful flailing at mean people.

So basically, I had “Hey, dork, you have a dryer sheet on your shoulder!” written all over me. I vetoed the t-shirt.

People in my Zumba class have told me that I should get the “Having the most fun” award, and that’s a t-shirt I’m going to invest in, only it’s going to say, “Getting my money’s worth.” When they say bump, I bump. When they say grind, I grind, and sometimes I throw in a poorly executed martial arts kick for old times sake and to see if my hip socket still rotates that far.

Here’s hoping that whatever’s written all over you is inspiring, noble, grand, and true—most of the time.

Linda (Write On!) Zern