LOVE UNDER THE MERGE SIGN--A CLASSIC ZIPPITYZERN

A professor asked the college class, “Who decides if a baby is a boy or a girl?”



One bright young thing piped up and said, “Society.”



After my son related this fascinating tale of modern American education, I walked out to my chicken coop and watched as my thirteen roosters commenced to crow, spur, posture, fight, flap, peck, and gang rape their way through my flock of hens.



“Who told you, you were roosters,” I yelled. 



I sold twelve of the thirteen roosters to my next-door neighbor for six dollars and fifty cents a piece. He got a bargain.  My hens got some relief, and I learned a lesson about the nature of the species. Roosters do not lay eggs.



According to a recent scientific (so it must be good) study men think about sex 2,072 times every second of every minute of every day—girls, not so much, but this is, of course, because of rigid social conditioning and that poem about snips, snails, and puppy dog tails.



Personally, I’m glad my mother did not socialize me to be a boy so that I would have to think about sex constantly. I occasionally enjoy thinking about—oh I don’t know . . . breakfast or the Civil War.



When my husband was born, his mother, fooled by his resemblance to a rooster, socialized him to be a boy, which means that when he became a teenager he enjoyed riding naked on motorcycles through the Florida back woods but not to worry; he likes to point out he always wore tennis shoes so that he could shift and to protect his feet.



Now my husband (of thirty plus years) flies away to various locations around the globe on Sunday afternoon and gets home on Thursday nights, and I used to pick him up at the airport, my heart filled with that little frisson of happiness and excitement that accompanied the notion of my man coming home from the sea.

I was always glad to see him—for about five minutes, and then he would talk. I make him take a taxi now.



While coming home from the airport, trying to merge into a steady stream of traffic, and not get us crushed under a shuttle bus, I would often say stuff like, “I’m so glad you’re home, honey.”



A noise not unlike the sound of pizza being digested would greet this announcement.



“So how was your week? How was your flight? See anyone interesting in the airport like Caesar Milan?”



Silence. Silence. Quiet and then more and a bigger silence and then . . .



“Let’s get it on,” he would say.



“What?” My hands would clench convulsively on the steering wheel. “Should I pull off the road next to the palm tree or do you want to wait until we pass the merge sign, and please tell me this isn’t your idea of romance?”



The conversation often deteriorated from there.



What I want to know is who told my husband he was a rooster?



I’d like to thank them, because after thirty plus years, four kids, and ten grandchildren he’s still crazy about me. What can I do?  We’re just getting to the good part and I, for one, am glad that roosters do not lay eggs.



Linda (Henny Penny) Zern  

Travel Tips A Go-Go

Travel Advisory 101

Having inadvertently become a world traveler via my husband’s obscene amount of free air miles, I have herein jotted down a few travel tips for the modern adventurer.

PS:  Yes, I am aware that the trips I have been on would have taken months and months and months to accomplish, and that at certain points in those trips, when the horses starting dropping dead from heat and boredom, the crew would have to toss the dead horse bodies into the ocean—thus the horse latitudes. I don’t care. It’s not my fault I got myself born after the Spanish discovered long distance cruises—also maize and stuffing galleons full of other people's  gold.

Linda Z’s Travel Tips:

1.    Wear clothes you’d wear when nine months pregnant, ninety three percent stretch and seven percent Lycra. Don’t be shocked when the thin black line that stands between you and exploding underwear (aka the TSA,) thinks that you are wearing a belt. Or as I said to the last TSA sweetie who patted me down looking for IED’s in my pants, “Sweetie, if that machine thinks I’m wearing a belt it’s defective, and you should contact the manufacturer.” Sweetie thought about having me arrested.

2.    Never wear bras with under wires. But don’t be surprised when the TSA says the machine indicates that you have an IED in your sports bra.

3.     Carry a purse the size of luggage. If it makes you tip over when fully loaded with nose tissues, cough drops, lip-gloss, and chocolate covered raisins it’s perfect.

4.     Carry multiple packs of nose tissues. They come in handy when trying to remove the boulder-sized boogers that spontaneously form in your nostrils from breathing bird flu infested airplane air.

5.     Never read the bird flu informational posters upon landing.

6.     Stay the size and shape of a shoehorn. The better to curl up in an airplane seat like a squirrel—a shoehorn squirrel.

7.     If checking luggage, purchase and use the largest suitcase sold on Amazon. It will make you feel better when you see the forlorn looks on anyone who has to carry it. It’s petty I know but oddly satisfying.

8.     Wear shoes made of duct tape. They scan well. But don’t be surprised if the TSA says that the machine indicates that there are Somali pirates hiding in them.

9.    Never eat the tiny airplane food. It’s not real.

10.  Carry a security blanket with dog, cat, and goat hair on it. With any luck your seatmates will notice and be horrified, asking to be moved to another flight.

11.  Have a contingency plan in case the world folds like a cheap greeting card while you’re flying over the Pacific Ocean. Ask yourself, “Can I survive on ‘the desert island’ with one bottle of Tylenol PM or should I double up?”

12.  And finally . . . never, and I mean never look the pilot in the eye when he butts in front of you in the line for the tiny potty. It’s the law. If pilots look their passengers in the eye they will turn to salt, the passengers not the pilot. If passengers don’t turn to salt then the pilots are allowed to treat the passengers like Somali pirates armed with IED underwire bras.

The best thing about traveling is making sure other people see you seeing things. Once, you had to invite your friends and acquaintances over for dinner and feed them and then force them to see your vacation home movies; now you can taunt them with updates on Facebook. No refreshments necessary. And you hardly ever have to toss dead horses over the rail into the ocean.

Linda (Turn Back Now) Zern

WHEN IN DOUBT GIFT SHOP

Fighting Nuclear War With Pinwheels
 the DMZ -South Korea . . . oh, and fifty thousand US troops

The Third Tunnel - Courtesy of North Korea

Traveling is a strange status symbol.  If you ask the average college student what they want to do with their lives they will say, “Cure cancer via a liberal arts degree and travel.”

To me it equates to, “See me, seeing things.” 

I hate traveling. It’s stressful and filled with turbulence. Literally. But I love my husband and he has to travel for his work—a lot. So . . . I travel . . . not as much as a lot, but once in a while.

His latest assignment has brought him to Korea and me too because I like him. 

Korea is one of the three kingdoms; it’s China, Japan, and Korea. Folks in Korea will be the first to let you know that those other two kingdoms have been, on occasion, pains in their Korean backside, but still they are a unique, feisty, independent bunch, and it ain’t been easy.

Especially when half of the country is divided from the other half by a big hefty line called the demilitarized zone or DMZ or 38th parallel or Land of the Many Gift Shops.

A weekend trip to the DMZ left me having to process what I had seen for days. I have learned that North Korea is a mystery of totalitarian silence and myth. Who knows what’s really going on over there? It’s locked down like a teenager on lifetime restriction. 

One of the tangible clues are the infiltration tunnels carved through solid granite, some big enough to drive jeeps through, heading from the communist north into the democratic south, built on the very ground that’s supposed to be off limits to all that sneaky monkey business. The North Koreans painted the walls of the tunnels with coal dust so they could claim that the tunnel wasn’t really a highway for invasion. It was really, really an abandoned coalmine. Oops. Our bad.

I know this because the South Koreans turned the “Third Tunnel” into a DISNEY RIDE.  It’s true.  I went on it. You put on a hard hat (blue) and you get on a rocket train (silver) and they roll you down into the tunnel (tight) where you then walk to the halfway point. Here you can look through a small window at the North Korean’s steel barrier which blocks off their half of the tunnel. I WENT ON A DMZ RIDE!

Our tour included an overlook where you can peek at North Korea and a train station to nowhere that the South Koreans have built, hoping one day to re-connect to their North Korean friends and family.

And at every stop on the tour there were GIFT SHOPS--also a memorial park, carnival rides for the kids, statuary, guides, buses, restrooms, fields of pinwheels, hikes, lectures, fountains, picnic areas, refreshments and GIFT SHOPS, many and much GIFT SHOPS.

I was boggled. I was so boggled I had to take a nap, but then I started to puzzle on it, and came to realize some important stuff. 

The South Korean people face the confirmed possibility of nuclear catastrophe every day of their lives, living in the center of an unstable bull’s eye. Their beloved country remains slashed by division and uncertainty. They are at war, even now, as I type this. 

Yet they continue to fight back. They continue to buy and sell and make and create. They continue to hope and wish and dream of something better. They go to church and worship, as they believe. And they fight back with GIFT SHOPS.

I don’t know when I’ve been so impressed with a group of people in my life and with their friends who stand on the line next to them, keeping watch in the night.

A lot of folks would be on their knees mewling about, bemoaning every day of their sad little lives and their tragic past and the tragic past of their daddy’s tragic past, and no doubt if you want to bad enough you’ll find that aspect of human nature here. But still.

They’ve turned bitter war and nuclear stalemate into a tourist attraction with gift shops! There were Three Musketeer’s bars and Pepsi and Kim Chi. 

I bought a hat.

It was the least I could do.  

Linda (Buy, Sell, Trade) Zern