RISE OF THE MACHINES

Eye contact was the first casualty. I haven’t made eye contact with another human being for two years. It’s hard to know where to focus my clever, witty retorts when all I see is the top of people’s heads as

they . . .

The cheery sound of tinny elevator music can be heard. Several fat minutes pass.

What was I typing? Oh right.

. . . hunch, as they hunch, over the glowing screen of their machines. They’re probably checking out my clever, witty retorts on Facebook or beating up on birds.

I blame the machines—also the birds.

The second casualty has been my self-esteem. My two-year old granddaughter, who does not speak any form of English that I recognize yet and still poops in her pants, brought one of the machines to me and showed me how to sling birds from a slingshot. I couldn’t do it. She laughed, took the machine and . . .

A clever ringtone of “Afternoon Delight” wafts through the sizzling airwaves. You wait impatiently for me to turn down the offer of free money from a bankrupt federal government.

. . . and with her tiny fingers flung birds about like artillery from the battle of the Bulge. I felt like a big, fat fingered old person.

The third casualty has been freedom: personal, private, individual, collective, group, and institutional. Gone.

Once we traveled long distances, through darkened streets, on rainy evenings without the benefit of the “emergency cell phone.” Those were primitive times. We existed by the seat of our pants, vulnerable to engine failure, flat tires, bad directions, fender benders, and weirdoes in farm houses with telephones. But we were free. Free to use two hands on the steering wheel. Free to use our blinkers. Free to get the news about the cupcakes for the party when you arrived at Sally’s house and not when you’re trying to merge onto I-4 at the Maitland Exchange.

Like I said those were . . .

I ignore you and answer the phone call about the cupcakes. And you wait and wait and wait and wait . . . and good news, Sally was able to get the Spider Man cupcakes on sale!

. . . primitive, primitive times.

I would finish this but there’s this new APP that’s all the rage where you try to blow up balloons with moose toots. It’s a scream. So let me just finish up this level, and I’ll be right with you . . . no, no, no, no, oh no . . . come on get in there, you moose toot, you . . .

Linda (Answer That!) Zern

  

Teaching vs. Telling

“Show don’t tell” is the first commandment you will hear when taking any writing class. It’s good advice.

It’s just that telling is easy and fast and showing requires an endless and judicious use of measures, weights, and scales: too much color, not enough noise, pointless detail, overly obvious contrasts, silly use of clichés.

When it comes to teaching the art of writing, I’m beginning to suspect the same dilemma exists—that showing is harder than telling.

We plow through short stories discussing theme and plot and character and decide that we do or do not “like” the story, but we rarely seize on the why and the how of a story. Why did it work or not. How did the author make it work? Is there evidence in the text itself to explain why a story is magic? How do they do it?

I wish that more writing teachers were able to show me why a writer is great rather than tell me that a writer is great.   

Little. Old. Lady.

I am not a nubile forty-year old anymore. It’s official. I am a little old lady. Here’s how I know.

Books Make Me Tip Over: I knew it was the beginning of the end when my twelve-year-old book bag, fully loaded and contents subject to shifting while in transit, made me tip over. College is not for the weak or shrinking.

“Hey, lady, are you okay?” asked the young man, approximately the age of bee larva, as he watched me sling my backpack over my shoulder. I staggered under its weight and tilted towards the center of the earth. The book bag weighed more than half of me. I staggered to the left and then lurched to the right. I was not dancing. The young man did not offer to help.

My husband finally bought me a rolling briefcase. It makes me look like I’m impersonating a professor, but it’s big enough for my books and my assorted eyebrow stencils.

The Eyebrow Stencils: I have to color my eyebrows on with a crayon. It’s time-consuming and fraught with the potential for goof-ups. Too much crayon and I’m Ronald MacDonald’s mother, too little and I’m Whoopie Goldberg. And the lingering tendency for my knucklebones to freeze up like a bad hinge made in China makes eyebrow placement a bit iffy.

A Burning in My Finger Bones:  Sherwood showed me his index finger. He said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me? My knuckle feels like it’s on fire.”

I held up my knobby hands, my aching elbows, and possibly one throbbing knee. “Yeah, that’s arthritis. I have fingers that are starting to look like they’re trying to run away from my hands. What’s your point?”

I still get hit on by men, but they resemble Captain Ahab from Moby Dick or gypsy wizards: I don’t want to talk about it.

I get extremely nervous when young children stare at me, especially my grandson Conner, who finds my advanced age and decrepitude a subject of extreme and ongoing puzzlement:  “YaYa, why are you so spotty and so bumpy and so old?”

“Conner, look over there; that person might be older than me.”

Then I hobble away as fast as my plantar fasciitis will allow.

No matter how you say it, spin it, or twirl it, it’s official; I am a little old lady.

Linda (Golden Girl) Zern