Sophisticated Marshmallow Smuggling - A Classic

The way a family spends its weekend is a real indicator of just how nuts a family is, no matter how not nuts they want people to believe they are.

My family is an excellent example of this working theory. We would like you to believe that we are sophisticated intellectual sorts who spend our leisure hours having deep philosophical discussions, frequenting places of stimulating cultural interest, and engaging in recreational activities. Here’s how the weekend really shakes out.

THE DEEP PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSION:

After watching The Lord of the Rings—again—we begin our post-movie, round table discussion by answering the following question, “What would you do if you had a ring that made you invisible?” Answers include . . .

Phillip (the son-in-law) - “I’d go around doing good for all mankind.”

Sherwood (my husband of forever) - “I’d sneak into women’s locker rooms.”

Phillip (when he heard Sherwood’s answer) -  “I’d sneak into women’s locker rooms with Sherwood.”

Me (the voice of reason and sanity) - “I’d sneak up behind Sherwood and Phillip sneaking around women’s locker rooms and bop them on the head.” But then I added, “Invisibility ring! I’m already invisible.  What I need is a VISISBILITY ring.”

 Adam (Please see my essay, Only A Nimrod Would Think that he could Tip Over a Whole Cow) – “I’d sneak up behind cows and tip them over.”

Maren (nineteen at the time) – “Men are dogs.”

 Heather (after twenty minutes of deep thought) – “Pants People?”

 THE FEATURED CULTURAL ACTIVITY:

 Before Disney, before Universal, before civilization there was Gatorland. Gatorland is a semi-tropical ode to tacky tourist traps.  We love it.

Murky pools of fetid water swirl as Florida alligators and the occasional crocodile glide by. Reptiles, roughly the size of sofas, bask in the shimmering heat. We throw marshmallows at them. Visitors can buy hotdogs to toss to the gators, which bring them to a boiling frenzy, but why? For ninety-nine cents and the thrill of watching Adam smuggle a bag of Jet-puffed marshmallows in his pants you can bring these pre-historic handbags to the point of hysteria.

(Please note: It is wrong to do this and you should never, ever smuggle foodstuffs in your pants when visiting Gatorland—ever. I’ll tell.)

And before anyone complains that we’re probably causing cavities in the alligators with our contraband marshmallows, let me remind you that alligators use their teeth for grabbing you, not chewing you. Alligators eat you—after they death roll you, drown up, stuff you under a submerged log, and tenderize you. Then they snack on you. Believe me, those marshmallows never touched their teeth.

Culture is 150 alligators lined up and waiting—breathless—for the next Jet-puffed marshmallow. Our working theory is that they’re sick of eating hot-dogs, biting chunks out of each other, or jumping for dangling chickens. (Note:  Yes they do jump, no matter what Sherwood and Philip say. They don’t jump great, but they jump.)

RECREATIONAL ACTIVITY:

Once a month, we indulge in Sunday dinner with the Chevrier family.  Note: Sometimes the Chevrier’s temporarily adopt one or more of our children and raise them, like in the Middle Ages when you sent your kids to other people’s castles to check out the alligators in their moats. 

So we have dinner. We eat. We talk. We discuss deep philosophical issues like, “Will marshmallows give alligators high blood pressure?” And if we’re really in a wild and crazy mood we take our own temperatures with Carol’s way cool ear thermometer. Aren’t you glad I didn’t say rectal thermometer?

There’s crazy and then there’s weird.

There you have it, philosophy, culture, and recreation. One of the things I like best about our family is that we can really laugh at ourselves. I can’t think of people I’d rather be invisible with or get busted with while smuggling marshmallows in my pants.

Linda (Puffy Pants) Zern

Lost and Lonely in Translation

A Stranger in a Strange Land - Sherwood K. Zern

"Don't try to understand them; and don't try to make them understand you. For they are a breed apart and make no sense." (Hawkeye in Last of the Mohicans)

The nice British man at the hotel health club showed me how to push the correct buttons on the treadmill, because I don’t treadmill much or ever. It’s boring and a little too hamster-like. Besides most of the exercise “machines” are set up for giants.

I’m more hobbit sized or hamster-esque.

Mostly, I enjoy dancing my way to fitness in zumba class or punching my way to a better attitude through combat kickboxing, where I can pretend to front kick giant bullies to death. 

Anyway, there were no zumba classes, so the nice young man was pointing out the various treadmill buttons: hamster wheel power on; cliff incline going up; mountain avalanche going down; trudging speed; time left to trudge; number of cookies worked off; etc.

When he pointed to the giant red stop button, I looked at him and asked, “So does that mean the same thing in England as it does in America?”

“Sure,” he said. “Stop means stop.”

Sort of, except when it doesn’t.

Last night our British waitress disappeared for twenty minutes, because she had to “put a cake down” she later explained.

The table full of Americans looked at her—confused.

“You killed a cake?” someone asked, shocked.

“What? No. What?”

“In America, when you “put something down” it means you killed it or are going to kill it; like when we’re going to put Fluffy down. Like that.”

“What? No. What?”

Is it any wonder that the world is a boiling kettle of misunderstanding? It’s so hard to make sense of each other. Honestly. Who kills a cake?  You might “polish it off” but that’s about it. And England is a country that speaks American, except when they don’t. 

My husband asked a cab driver if they do any “mutton bustin’” in England.

The cabbie replied, “No, we leave that to the Welsh and we call it sheep shaggin’.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. Mutton bustin’ is putting your children on the backs of sheep and letting them get bucked off.”

Not the same thing at all.

And that’s why conflict and invasion are inevitable, because dialogue is filled with the endless land mines of misunderstanding, confusion, and kooky talk.

Sheep shaggin’ indeed! Who let’s their sheep run around with a bad haircut from the seventies?

Linda (Shag Cut) Zern

 

SEEING STUFF

An American Traitor

Traitor's Gate, The Tower of London

The educated young people at my college, when asked about what they want to do when they grow up will inevitably say, “I want to travel and see things.”

It’s a fine aspiration. Traveling is good, is fun, is educational . . . is great for the tourism industry. It’s the “seeing” of things that worries me.

The same educated young people and, for that matter, old people and the in-the-middle-people talk about “seeing things” like it’s a skill that you don’t have to practice before you arrive at your destination. Once you get to the Tower of London or the Wailing Wall or wherever, your eyes will snap open and your brain will start processing the scene like an android high on gigabytes.

“Boy, I’m seeing some stuff now!” 

The problem with this expectation is that it’s crap.

My husband travels—a lot. Once in a while, I drag along with him. Recently, in the Delta Crown Room in Boston (a giant holding pen for nerds set up by the airline so the nerds won’t wander off and fall into ditches) I watched the mating dance of the young and newly enhanced. My husband, the world traveler might as well have fallen in a ditch.

“Babe, are you seeing this?” I hissed, nodding toward a beautiful, blond girl sitting at the bar. “She has picked up and moved three times since we’ve been here.”

“Urg, slurg . . . harrumph,” he said, tapping away at his smallest machine. “Seeing what?”

The other nerds tapped away at their machines, of varying size and power usage.

“That girl, watch her. When she gets up and moves. She faces the room, bends over and displays her lovely . . . bits in a showy exhibition of availability and then relocates. See those two guys?”

Two of the younger nerds had been drawn into her wake and had begun to follow her migration around the room.

“Seriously, check it out.”

The girl stood, bent, displayed, and then moved to a new nesting area.

I finally had my husband’s attention.  His eyes bugged out of his head.

He glanced at me and said, “Good grief, how do you see these things?”

“Practice, lots and lots of practice. That and I don’t know how to text message.”

The Tower of London was historical and interesting, but the trip from Reading, England on the train was where the real sight seeing happened. It was the young girl crammed into the stairwell of the train with her six-year old as she went into hard labor. Auburn haired and pink cheeked she looked like one of my daughters. Her little boy pretended to be Spider Man, shooting his webs at my husband, while his mother’s belly convulsed with a contraction every two or three minutes. I tried smiling at her, but she warned me off with a death glare.

No wedding ring. No one to help her. Hurting and alone on a crammed train, heading for London and sitting on a suitcase, she began to shake and cry. Her little boy reached out to her swollen body, touching her belly gently, shyly.

“You won’t forget me then, while I’m gone,” she said. I don’t know if he heard her. The train’s roar swallowed conversation.

Everyone else tapped away at their machines—sending and receiving, while the drama played out at their feet.

That’s the problem with real life drama verses this notion of “sight seeing.”  Drama frowns and cries and does unpredictable, uncomfortable things—unlike sights, one travels thousands of miles to see, where all the tears have dried and the bodies are long buried.

Looking is not the same thing as seeing.

My best travel advice is to practice “seeing stuff” right where you are. Turn off the machines. Open your eyes. Because the sights are happening, probably right at your feet.

Linda (Eyes Like Headlights) Zern