C is for Chump

I married my high school sweetheart. My husband married his high school sweetheart. Which means that we married each other. It also means that we went to high school together. He followed me around for all of my sophomore year. I had no idea. Back then it was called ‘kind of cute.’ Today it’s called stalking.

After the stalking phase, we actually took a class together—some kind of writing class, I can’t remember what it was called—Word Mongering, Essays Anyone Can Understand, How to BS Your Way Through the Rest of your Life, something.

The first thing our public school teacher told us was that no one in that class, not one of us, was college material.

I believed her.

I’m not sure if Sherwood cared enough to believe her. I think he was still mildly stalking me at this point.

The second thing our public school teacher said left most of us shocked and shaken.

“I can smell plagiarism. And I mean smell it, not to mention recognize it when I see it,” she said, fixing her plagiarism-detecting eyes on us as she looked down her plagiarism-sniffing nose at us. She repeated her plagiarism spotting abilities, many times. We trembled.

Okay, I trembled. Sherwood was checking out my Sweet Honesty t-shirt.

I went home and sweated over our first writing assignment, two pages of ‘something that interests you,’ every word mine, every thought from me, every sentence coming out of my head. What was my paper about? I have no idea. But I know one thing, IT WAS MY ORIGINAL WORK.

Sherwood went home cracked open the Funk and Wagnall’s Encyclopedia and copied one of the articles—WORD FOR WORD—straight out of the book. I remember what his TOTALLY FAKE essay was about—The Boston Freaking Marathon.

We handed in our papers to the fake paper-sniffing teacher.

Okay, let’s recap. I wrote a totally original essay. Sherwood cheated like a guy selling fake Gucci’s in New York City.

Sherwood the Cheater made . . . wait for it . . . an A, with “Very Interesting!” written across the top of that fake paper like a going out of business banner.

My paper? I made . . . wait for it . . . a C . . . for chump.

Later, he had the effrontery—how’s that word for a C for chump writer—to claim that he didn’t copy the article word for word. He left out words like written by and see reference.

I admit; it was a little discouraging, but I got over it and had the effrontery to finally go to college and keep right on writing. I also married the boy, but I encouraged him to pursue a career in computers rather than wordsmithing.

Linda (Tattle Tale) Zern

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POPPY LOVE

My husband and I are halfway to a hundred. Or as I informed my college editing class, “I’ve lived half of a hundred years, and I have a lot to say.” And then I said some crazy crap about needing to take the grammar class so that I could say what I want to say more clearly. Then I failed my first grammar test.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far in Editing Essentials. Human beings can take the fun out of just about anything. Just. About. Anything.

“Hey there, Grog, I sure like those spear chuckers’ spears you’ve painted on that cave wall. Spear chuckers’, plural possessive, right?”

Not my husband, he’s a man who knows the value of simple pleasures and simple fun. He knows that grandchildren would rather play “Monster” with Poppy in a dark yard, than join a league of any kind, ever.

Monster is a simple game. The children run screaming in terror while Poppy sneaks up on them, leaps out at them, or hunts them down like a spear chucker stalking baby bison. The game is considered successful when one or more of the younger children are booger crying from fright, and the older children are so sweaty from running around they smell like baby mammoths.

It’s a little known fact that a romping good game of Monster can cripple Poppy up for two, even three days. But still he answers the call of “Play Monster, Poppy. Play Monster.”

And that’s why when our ten grandchildren walk in the front door they take one look at me and then ask, “Where’s Poppy?” Because he’s fun, that’s why. No quizzes. No tests. No note cards. No stupid, endless rules. Just fun. Just screaming, adrenalin pumping, heart stopping fun. And what’s wrong with that? Not a single thing.

Linda (Chopped Liver) Zern