ANXIOUSLY ENGAGED

The universe does not respect me. I know this because nothing good I do goes unpunished. Ever. I want to be a doer of good deeds. I want to be known as a good person. But I’m over it. I’m just going to be a mean girl. The universe likes mean girls. I’m sure of it.

While running errands, which I hate to do, I took a phone call from my husband. He had a request—more errands. Please pick up my prescription at the store, which sells such things. Trying to be a doer of good deeds, I agreed.

I pulled into the drive-through. Can the world get more convenient? The mind boggles.

At the window I answered the questions, knew the right address, recited the correct birth date and shoved the cash into the convenient sliding drawer.

A gust of wind sucked the **twenty out of the convenient sliding drawer.

The girl behind the window looked stricken.

I opened my truck door, which hit the convenient sliding drawer, giving me approximately six inches to slide out between the building and my truck. Another gust of wind blew the twenty under the truck. I felt stricken. Thought about cussing.

I dropped to my knees to climb under the truck.

Coming up with the money, I cried out triumphantly, and smacked my head on the convenient sliding drawer.

I quit thinking about cussing.

It was all so convenient; I almost died.

And then I got the flu.

Mean girls, now that’s the way to live. Make a sex tape and get wildly rich, famous, and discussed.

Linda (Get It Yourself) Zern

** It used to be a ten before that Affordable Act deal.

     

Dancing on Graves

When I was little I got in trouble for walking on a dead man. I was four. And I was walking through a cemetery. 

The dead man’s widow pointed to the rectangle outlined in white stones on the ground and said, “That’s my husband and you’re walking on him.” I looked down and saw a rectangle outlined in white stones.

I was four and confused.

My mother was older than four and weirded-out by my love of cemeteries. The graveyard was across the street from the apartment we lived in, and I would beg her to go there for walks. I still remember crossing the street to walk in the cemetery. 

She couldn’t figure me out. 

It wasn’t the dead people that I loved to visit. It was the flowers. The cemetery was the one place in the city that had flowers, and I couldn’t get enough of them, even at four. 

It’s still true.

My grandchildren recently asked me, “YaYa, are seeds alive?” Ahhh, such a good question. 

I said, “They will be with the right amount of dirt, water, and sun, and someone that cares enough to fuss with them. And then look out . . . you’ll have flowers . . . someday. It takes time.”

I watched grandchildren scrabble through the dirt, and turn over stones, looking for whatever might be under there, and I thought about seeds needing dirt, water, sun, and someone who cared enough to fuss with them . . . and time enough for the blooming.

It’s almost magic, growing stuff. Isn’t it? It may be a slow magic that can take a lifetime but then there are flowers, even at the cemetery, and they can make you want to dance on graves. 

Linda (Flower Child) Zern

Riding the Learning Curve

Watching my son-in-law try to dress our first granddaughter for her ride home from the hospital was painful. He gingerly tried to trap one of her flailing fists to gently guide her hand through a darling pink jumpsuit. The fist eluded him. He acted like she was made of frozen glass spider webs. Finally, I could take it no more; backing him away from the baby, I grabbed her fist and shoved it through the sleeve of her outfit; first one and then repeat. She was dressed in less than a minute.

The learning curve to dressing a newborn baby isn’t steep, but it is real, and it’s a pattern for the rest of our ever-learning lives. Just about the time you’re pretty sure you know stuff, the stuff changes and becomes a baby with twitchy hands or a book that needs formatting.

In nothing is this more evident than in the shifting world of social media and the Internet.

I no longer have babies that resemble my husband. I have graduated to making babies that resemble “War and Peace,” only a lot shorter. I write novels. They are like my babies, and I want you to read them—not read to them.

When people ask me what I write, I say, “Yes.”

The learning curve associated with writing books is varied and curvy. First, you learn how to keep your baby safe from the black hole of Where did it go? I know I hit the save button! And then you progress all the way up to books on audio, where you’re interviewing actors to read your book—on tape!

It’s not hard, but there’s some tech stuff and a bit of a learning curve. That’s what I’ve been told.

So let’s discuss what is meant by “learning curve.”

1. It means that you are empty of answers—also ignorant. How do you grab a baby’s jerky little hand? Will it hurt the baby? Are babies made of frozen glass spider webs? Is CreateSpace run by elves? Why does my formatting look like reformed Egyptian? 
2. You are not stupid because you are ignorant, but you will feel stupid.
3. The feeling of stupid will give way to the feeling of intense, painful frustration because people will start explaining how to ride the learning curve, using words you will not understand.
4. If your learning curve is anything like algebra and it will be; those that know will use words you don’t understand over and over again, getting louder and louder, until you pretend to “get it.” When they say, “See?” You shout, “Of course.” Then cry.
5. After a zillion hours of riding the learning curve of ___________________ (fill in the blank) you will acquire a certain level of proficiency.
6. Then THEY will change the program, the coding, or the rules.

The good news is that learning curve stuff is good for me, and writing books is like having a baby made by my brain. It keeps me young. It keeps me sharp. It keeps me in the game. Otherwise, I might never have been able to figure out how to stick a baby’s hand through one of those tight, clingy, little sleeves.

Linda (Sit Tight) Zern