A Classic ZippityZern: ALLEGEDLY

Some time ago, I watched an Elvis impersonator dude get arrested, interrogated, searched, accused, and observed with a jaundiced eye for possibly whipping up a batch of Ricin in his kitchen. It made me wonder. What would our neighbors say about us on cable TV if we were hauled off for cooking up crazy crap in a crock-pot?

Allegedly.

See something. Say something.

I’ve been trying to imagine what the neighbors are “seeing” at our place when they peek over our wire field fence, realizing if I said something every time I saw something at my neighbor’s house, I’d have the See-Something-Say-Something folks on speed dial.

I mean how weird does it have to be to qualify as something?

It’s not hard to imagine one of those breathless, throaty cable reporters stuffing a microphone in my next-door neighbor’s face and asking, “So, is it true that the Zern family had some unusual weekend rituals? Allegedly?”

“Rituals, no, but they seemed to be overly found of circling.”

Reporter nods and asks, “Satanic symbols? Hex signs? Crop circles?”

“No. Nothing like that, but when they sit outside in their crappy lawn chairs they always wind up in a circle. But it migrates.”

“What does?” The reporter will look perplexed but intrigued.

“The yard circle. In the summer they circle under that big maple tree, but in the winter they land on the septic tank.” At this point our neighbor gets tired of pointing and drops his hand.

“And did you see that as an indication that they were cooking up crazy crap in a crock-pot.”

Hesitating, my neighbor will scratch his head. “No. But those grandkids are constantly peeing on stuff.”

There it is. Public urination and yard circles. Our family would be good for at least one charge of felony mischief.

But that’s not as bad as what goes on at our next-door neighbor’s house. Allegedly.

Our neighbor’s eight-year old son informed my daughter that on Sundays his family likes to practice “knifing.”

She asked, “What’s knifing?”

“You know,” he said, “when you make a target and practice throwing knives at it.”

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that our family is way behind on its knifing practice. Don’t tell.

Linda (Don’t Look. Don’t Tell.) Zern

I OBJECT

I'll have everyone know that the picture at the top of the page is the real me.  I look like this every single day, rain or shine, early or late, wet or dry.  The picture underneath is not me, no matter what my grandchildren claim. 

Glitter Up Nuts

My husband Sherwood travels everywhere, all the time. It’s not as cool as it sounds. Mostly it means getting ‘felt up’ by airport officials on every continent.

Our overseas communication policy is to talk twice a day, every day by cell phone. This allows us to make sure that neither one of us has been kidnapped by near sighted sex slavers. It also allows us to handle family business long distance. Examples of family business include: I’m sad because raccoons got in the garbage again; where’s the barn broom; or why didn’t you buy rabbit food? That kind of stuff.

However, since Homeland Security has been under the gun . . . oops . . . no, no not gun . . . I mean G for glitter, U for up, and N for nuts . . . since they’ve been under the Glitter Up Nuts for collecting overseas and domestic calls and making notes, we’ve decided to come up with a code word system for our private telephone business.

Think Enigma Code for Dummies.

Please don’t spread it around. This is just between us: you and me and some pimply computer wonk at Homeland Security.

Here’s the breakdown.

When I say, “Come home and drill something!”

It’s code. It means, come home and trap the raccoons trying to turn our garbage cans into apartments for their furry little jerk selves.

If I claim, “The roosters are howling.”

It means that the Muslim neighbors have been firing off enough ammunition at tin can targets to make our dogs refuse to go outside to relieve themselves, and I’m worried they’ll explode from urine retention.

When I declare, “Ugh! The dolts are in the house.”

That’s political commentary meaning that there are actual dolts in the actual big house on the actual hill acting like loonies, or how the heck did Alan Grayson become our representative? Doesn’t he live in Orlando?

It’s a sign of the times. The words only mean what I mean them to mean; get what I mean? Or I’m thinking of buying a Glitter Up Nut.

We also have a code word should either one of us be kidnapped by near sighted sex slavers, but Sherwood is always forgetting what the code word is, which makes me testy when I quiz him. He can remember a thousand weird computer acronyms for when Uganda calls, but he can’t remember our sex slaver kidnapper code word. What’s up with that?

See why I need a Glitter Up Nut?

Linda (Enigma Elf) Zern