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 governmental officials; or Chinese 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 . . . goofy!

Linda (Once Bitten, Twice Shy) Zern

NOTES FROM THE VILLAGE

Hillary Clinton made the phrase “It takes a village to raise a child” famous. She stole it from an old African village but . . . well . . . that’s a worry for another blog, and I’ve got a couple of questions for Bill’s wife.

What village? Whose village? Big village? Small village? City village? Country village? And what should the village do with the villagers who can’t keep their drunken tally whackers in their nasty pants, making babies they have no intention of buying insurance for . . . 

But mostly . . . what’s a village? Please define.

From a really, really recognizable source of information that no one lets you use in college when you write an essay: “Although many patterns of village life have existed, the typical village was small, consisting of perhaps 5 to 30 families. Homes were situated together for sociability and defense, and land surrounding the living quarters was farmed.”

Hmmmm . . . families . . . extended families: so a village is mom, dad, brother, sister, grandma, grandpa and crazy Aunt Maud. Interesting. But I’m afraid I have some bad news. Young villagers aren’t so village minded these days.

One fine day in college, while contemplating the coming Thanksgiving break, I listened to some fine young students talk about heading home to—you guessed it—the village that spawned them.

One young man said, “I’m going home, but it’s bu!!$&*#. I hate my family. But hey, they’re paying my bills.”

My immediate thought? And another village bites the dust.

Villages are closely related people who care about and worry for the health, wealth, and happiness of the next generation of villagers. Boys were valued for their ability to battle off soccer hooligans. Girls were valued for just about everything else. Adults imparted culture. Older members imparted wisdom and opportunities for service. No one went on a cruise.

Not only were villages efficient, they were also tough. Villagers who proved to be idiots were often displayed in public stocks, allowing the other villagers—on their way to milk goats or weave something—to express their displeasure by tossing verbal barbs or horse crap at the idiot. Hard work was lauded. Idiots included: adulterers, liars, thieves, slack-jawed losers, and hooligans. 

Villages that practiced slack-jawed laziness became extinct like the giant sloth. No one bailed them out. To deal with the worry and the insecurity and the global climate shenanigans the village went to church on Sunday, and they did pretty well. 

They drank raw milk. They ate free-range eggs, and they stored up roots for winter soup. They didn’t live as long as we do—true. But they did manage to give birth to and educate some fairly impressive individuals who managed to realize that the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness does not come from the village at all but from some greater, more permanent source: God and Nature’s God.

I say, “Bring back the village and the public stocks.” I’ll provide the horse pucky.

Linda (Shame on You) Zern

[Y]otes For Women

Valentine’s Day is for lovers.

Halloween is for dreamers and doers. People dress up as the people they dream of being and dream of doing. That sounded better in my head.

It’s my favorite. I love dressing up. This year I went as . . . well . . . a figure (a type, a kind) from history, not a person from history, but a figure from history. 

This year I went as a turn of the century suffragette. 

Two people knew the word.

One person thought I was a cowboy. Alcohol was NOT being served at the party I attended.

Most people, who guessed close, knew that I had something to do with Mary Poppins.

One individual thought my sash read “Yotes” not “Votes.”

I confess that the iron-on V looks a lot like the iron-on Y.

One gentleman thought that my sash was a plea to elect a woman for president and was a little bit hostile about it. It got me to thinking about the importance of history and prepositions and the history of prepositions. 

My sash read: Votes FOR Women. (It was once illegal in this country for women to cast a ballot. Suffrage is the right to vote. Thus suffragettes.)

It did not read: Vote FOR A Woman. 

Or: Vote OF Women.

Or: Vote THROUGH Women.

Or: Vote ABOUT Women.

Or: Vote UP Women.

It said: [V]OTES FOR WOMEN.

Nothing wrong with that. Right? 

Like the song says, “Our daughter’s daughters will adore us, as we sing in grateful chorus, ‘Well done! Well done! Sister Suffragettes!”

Mostly, I went as an indictment of the public school system! And that’s the scariest monster of them all.

Linda (One Women, One Vote) Zern