POSSE PERFECT

We are a civic-minded couple. We vote. We pay taxes. We watch cable news and shout at the television. We watch CNN in airports and shake our heads.

We volunteer in our communities.

We are Osceola County Volunteer Mounted Posse members. Well, my husband is one of those—him and Miss Kitty, his horse. I’m just applying to be a one of those—along with my free horse, Jayla. Right now, I’m in volunteer limbo, waiting to be finger printed, lie-detected, drug tested, and questioned. 

My free horse is waiting to grow hair in her ears, but that’s another story. 

Until the county calls, I rub lotion on my free horse, hoping she’ll grow hair. I practice posse stuff, and I continue to live clean and free.

Sometimes my posse husband and I ride our horses down to Lake Toho. We practice walking passed cows, plastic bags, deer bones, barking dogs, speeding cars, metal grates, and a graveyard. It’s important to de-sensitive horses to things that might frighten them, which is everything. Horses have been wolf food since God kicked Adam and Eve out of that garden. It’s made them skittery, the horses, not Adam and Eve. 

Adam and Eve are skittery for different reasons.

One of the jobs of the volunteer posse is to look for folks who’ve wandered off: kids, seniors, dead people.

The way I see it if I fell out of an airplane and ended up naked in the woods, not alive, I’d want somebody to come and find me besides the raccoons.

On a trip down to the lake we noticed a cloud of smell that murder mysteries like to refer to as decomp. We rode on. Our horses didn’t twitch or snort. 

“Wow, that’s some bad smell,” I said.

“Yep. That’s a big dead something all right,” Sherwood said.

We rode on. Passed the cows, next to the cemetery, down to the lake. And back again.

The smell had not dissipated. 

“Wow, that’s some bad smell,” I repeated.

“Yep. That’s a big dead something all right,” Sherwood said.

“And there it is,” I said. And there it was, someone’s really big, really stinky, really dead cow, in plain sight and in plain smell, in the pasture next to the road. Somehow we had managed to ride right passed a thousand pounds of odiferous cow. Some posse members we were.

“Wow, I’d have to give us a big F on locating dead cows in the woods.”

“Yep,” he said.

That’s country living. Wolves eat horses. Cows drop dead. Vultures fight the Bald Eagles for road kill. And free horses are never free.

But if you fell out of an airplane and ended up naked in the woods, not alive, you’d want someone to come and find you, even if their free horse had no hair in its ears.

Linda (Leg Up) Zern

I'll Scratch You All Over

The fourth brother in the grandkid gang was snotty, crying, dirty, and done. I pointed at it and told my daughter, “Take that one home, wash it, pat it, and put it to bed.”

The third brother in the gang felt that I had dissed his littlest brother.  He began to mutter. His face closed like a fist.

I tried to interpret his three-year old muttering.

Nothing.

“Heather,” I said to my daughter, “what’s he saying?”

She listened for a while.

With more optimism and hope than knowledge she reported, “He’s saying, ‘I’ll love you forever.’”

Zac’s face now resembled angry granite.

“Heather, look at his face. I don’t think he’s saying, ‘I’ll love you forever.’”

She sighed and then reported, “He’s saying, ‘I’ll scratch you all over.’”

Ah ha!  That was more like it.

This incident typifies what I like to call the Wishful Thinking Syndrome. It was wishful thinking that Zac was waving a fond goodbye to his old YaYa with charming declarations of undying devotion.

There’s a lot of Wishful Thinking Syndrome going around I’ve noticed.

It’s wishful thinking that professors who are busy trying to sell their books will be available to help you sell yours.

It’s wishful thinking that low self esteem, broken hearts, damaged egos, and sociopathic behavior can be fixed with quick cash. 

It’s wishful thinking that food without butter, salt, fat, and sugar is going to be as good as food with butter, salt, fat, and sugar.

It’s wishful thinking that bread and circuses are going to work forever. (See history of the Roman Empire)

It’s wishful thinking to believe that hot flashes will make you grow taller after age fifty or before age fifty.

It’s wishful . . . well, you get the picture.

Wishful thinking is a direct result of the modern notions that human beings deserve trophies for breathing, that buying a Wraptastic will change your life, and that everything billed as ‘based on a true story’ is true.

Get real. The three-year old kid is not telling you he’s going to love you forever—this time. This time he’s threatening to claw you with grubby fingernails. Sigh. It happens.

The news isn’t all bad, however.  

It is my hopeful wishful belief that for every busted thought-wish, there are those rare and dazzling moments when our wishful thoughts actually reflect reality and the kid is saying that he’s going to love you forever and the purchase of a Wraptastic does, in fact, change your life. But those moments are both rare and dazzling, which makes reality way better than wishful thinking—sort of like having a unicorn to ride to the free puppy store.

Linda (Scratch Resistant) Zern

              

 

MOONCALF - BOOK JACKET

COMING TO AMAZON.COM * SOON

Over Olympia and Leah’s heads, Americans race the Russians to the moon; on their television sets young men fight and struggle in the mud of Viet Nam. America holds its breath between heartbreaking tragedies.  

But on Miss Brinker’s school bus, in the seat with the rip in the green plastic, Olympia and Leah fall in love, the way children do:  immediately, completely, and without knowing or caring why they shouldn’t. Olympia Crooms, with her happy hair, and Leah Breck, with her silly red dog, are two smart girls.

Olympia's father works other men's orange groves in rural Central Florida and tells his daughter that school is the best way to reach for the stars. Leah's father moves his family from the Space Coast to the country where she and her brother can climb orange trees, imagine lions in the tall grass, and learn to feed baby cows milk from a bottle.

At Evegan Elementary, two smart girls find each other and have to decide if they will learn the hardest lessons of all—the false traditions of their fathers.