Exceptional Nonsense

I am exceptional.

Are you mad yet?

Because a lot of people seem to find my exceptionalism wildly annoying, and they say stuff to me like, “Linda, you make me sick,” or “Linda, I could kill you for making all those good grades,” or “Linda, you’re such a smarty pants you make me sick. I could kill you.”

I don’t even own smarty pants. I own Diane Gilman, sexy jeans for grandma pants. They make me look exceptional. I can’t help it.

And, truthfully, I’m not sure I would help it, if I could help it because exceptional suits me fine.

It makes me a little bit sad on Tuesdays and Thursdays when I count up all the folks I’ve made sick because I’ve always made good grades in school, but then I decide to paint the barn and the sadness goes away.

Truthfully, I don’t mean to make people sick or want to kill me, I just like doing a good job. I don’t enjoy feeling panic stricken because I haven’t done my homework. Being prepared allows me to sleep. Studying steadies my nerves. Putting my heart into a project keeps life interesting. Working hard gives me a sense of satisfaction and esteem of self, which society is always harping about, by the way: build your self esteem, feel good about yourself, self esteem rocks, here’s a trophy for breathing.

But then you paint the barn all by yourself, and people who haven’t painted their barns are mad at you and want to kill you.

It’s very confusing.

My son-in-law once observed, “Well, after she gets done mowing the farm, she comes in and writes a book or something. She stays pretty busy.”

And there it is. Busy beats coma, every time. I like busy.

I have a granddaughter who likes busy too. It was hard for her to learn to read because it meant she had to sit still and not build a fort from palm fronds. But then she figured out that you could read books about making forts from palm fronds and duct tape. And now there’s no stopping her.

She draws, paints, weaves, knits, and duct tapes, or she’s reading about it. I feel bad for her. People are going to want to kill her—a lot.

Here’s my advice to her. Do you best, Babe. If you’re going to make a pillow out of duct tape, make the biggest, most yellow, most duck beak embellished duct tape pillow you can make, and then put it in the Osceola County Fair and then win a blue ribbon. And then do a dance in the sunshine of your exceptional accomplishment. Amen and amen.

My other granddaughter is a scientific memory machine. She won several blue ribbons. She is exceptional.

My grandson can hob knob with fifty year olds without pausing to take a breath. He came home with six medals from the fair. He is exceptional.

And the list goes on . . .

Let me be clear. Exceptional means out of the ordinary; it can even mean better than someone else. It doesn’t mean, “I’m better and you suck.” It means I am smart, capable, quick, and excited about life, and you can be too. Just get off that couch and patch up the holes in the Lazy-Boy with duct tape.

Linda (Look what I can do!) Zern

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.