Sugar Plums Dancing on my Gray Matter: A Christmas Story

The Christmas Crush

Last year I did not decorate for Christmas. I don’t know; I just wasn’t feeling it. Aric was in Afghanistan. The housing market was in the local landfill. Everyone who had decided to have only one or two kids so that they could “spoil them” had succeeded.

Instead of decorating, I started my spring cleaning—in December. And I heard about the decoration desert at YaYa’s all year long.

This year I decorated. For two days I unpacked, hung, strung, pushed, moved, arranged, draped, rearranged, assembled, located, dusted, displayed, climbed, and hung. (Oh wait, I already said hung; too bad, I’m leaving it. It’s a double hung kind of story.)

Last night in glittering triumph, I prepared to hang the last ornament on the last branch of the most beautiful Christmas tree I have ever personally overseen. In exhausted triumph, I hung that last gold whatever on the tree, stepped back to admire my work, and—the whole silver and gold vision toppled straight over on top of me—shattering about half of my most cherished holiday ornaments and crushing me to death.

In fact, I’m sending this to you from the spirit world. It’s not so bad here. Lots of time. Lots of interesting folks to chat with. In fact, I see Charles Dickens right over there. I think I’m going to go over and ask him a couple of questions about the inspiration for his Christmas story. Shalom from the other side.

Linda (Holly Jolly) Zern  

Weirdo Magnet

Warning: Some of the observations in this essay may appear politically incorrect, boorish, or just plain snobby. My advice is to “roll with it” and take comfort in the knowledge that your judgmental attitude toward my judgmental attitude is superior in every way.

I am a weirdo magnet.

And when I say “weirdo” I mean I attract people who are loonies, goonies, and possibly sand people. These are folks who stray from the norms of normalcy in ways that are hard to predict under normal circumstances and often involve the wearing of tinfoil pantaloons.

My husband, Sherwood (a man with a somewhat unusual name) once tried to help me find the cause of my weirdo magnetism.

“It’s because you make eye contact, listen to what the sand people have to say, and treat them like regular people.”

“Oh, you mean I’m kind.”

“Exactly! Knock it off.”

I try. I really do. But the tinfoil pantaloon people take me by surprise, often at WalMart.

Like Saturday, when the world’s oldest living hippy spotted me, sized me up, and cut me out of the herd. It’s possible that his grizzled ponytail was pulled a bit tight. From under a moustache the color of old lemonade, he informed me that he enjoyed picking up the clothes that shoppers carelessly threw on the ground in the children’s department at our local WalMart.

“Oh no. I hope it wasn’t me,” I said, feeling my hands clench reflexively around the purple velour hoodie I was holding—sized twelve months.

He continued, “But my back hurts now, and I’m done picking up clothes.” His shopping cart effectively cut me off from the shoe department, the dairy section, and electronics—also freedom.

“Would you like to know something?”

Looking the grizzled hippy man straight in the eye, I said, “Of course.”  I can’t help it. I’m the curious sort.

He gestured vaguely toward the baby seat of his shopping cart.

“I’m getting a little something for myself for Christmas.”

I can’t help it. I’m a visual person. I did look.

Risking a quick glance, I saw that he had two packages of women’s underwear in his cart. White. Polyester. Not thongs. Hopefully. I looked away as quickly as my eyeballs could swivel in my eye sockets.

With a flourish and a wink, he said, “I’ve got two honeys, but they’re different sizes; I’d better not get the panties mixed up. Hee, hee, hee.”

I closed my eyes and tried to picture his “honeys,” plural. I couldn’t.

“Wow, no, I wouldn’t mix up their sizes. That might be big trouble, and you wouldn’t want that, especially at Christmas time. Hee, hee, hee. Well, good luck with that.”

Growing irrationally more concerned that he was about to ask me my panty size I began to inch away and look for my grown daughter, a daughter who had managed to completely disappear into a rack of little girl’s pajama bottoms during the conversation. See above.

I know. I know. It was a harsh, biased, judgmental response to the perfectly nice overtures of a perfectly nice panty-loving, weirdo. 

I can’t help it. I’m a weirdo magnet.

Linda (Two-For-One) Zern

  

Knees Like Knuckles

By the year 2099 (if we survive 2012, 2013, and the year that asteroid comes back with Bruce Willis riding on it) the world will be covered with old people. Some will be older than others.

I am anticipating that oldness will be very hip in the coming years and some oldness hipper than others, depending on the condition of people’s knees—also hips, real or faux. My husband and I will be on the tail end of the baby booming retirement craze, having been born on the tail end of the baby boom.  Actually, we were born on the fizzle at the end of the baby boom, which means that our hips still work (last check) but our knees talk more than they used to. Okay, our knees don’t really “talk” they cuss, and in my husband’s case, they swear up a blue streak.

The following is actual pillow talk between two fifty-somethings contemplating the end of their functioning kneecaps, okay, it’s a conversation between me and my boyfriend of thirty-three years (Sherwood the Knuckle-Knee Zern):

“Sherwood, I’m giving you the two minute warning. Brace yourself; I’m going to roll over and give you a hug and a goodnight kiss.”

I heard him rearranging himself next to me, amid the sounds of his shoulder popping, his knee mourning the loss of its ACL, and his spine snapping shut.

I rolled toward him and puckered up; his shoulder popped like a breakfast circle made by elves.

He moaned and clutched his shoulder, which brought his knee in contact with a particularly rough fold of bed linen. He thrashed around on our pillow top mattress. I watched.

“Babe, have you been doing those exercises with that big rubber band thingy the doctor gave you.”

“Which one?” he gasped out.

“Hunh, which what? Which exercise, rubber band thingy, or body part? Is that what you mean?” He continued to thrash, concentrating on not answering me. “Okay, have you been doing your shoulder exercises with the blue rubber band thingy the doctor gave you?”

He paused in his thrashing.

“I always pack the rubber band thingy the doctor gives me when I travel.”   

 “You know, you have to actually do the exercises with the rubber band thingy to keep your body parts from falling off with old age and mildew.” I started in on my (the-couple-who-exercises-together-stays-out-of-the-orthopedic-surgeon’s-office-together) speech, finishing with, “How many of those exercise rubber bands from the doctor do you have anyway?”

He considered.

“I have enough of those exercise rubber bands that if I sewed them all together I’d have a hell of a slingshot.”

“A slingshot might be a good thing to have when the zombie apocalypse gets here, ‘cuz you sure aren’t going to be outrunning those zombies anymore,” I said and gave him a goodnight kiss.  “And what’s with the cussing? You never cuss.”

“That wasn’t me; that was my knee back talking.”

I got up to take some Advil PM for the burning in my lumpy finger bones—also known as arthritis, which in my case is caused by meanness—also mildew.  Bring on the zombie baby booming apocalypse.

Linda (Got Fit Hips?) Zern