INTRUSION

We are being ‘data’ mined like coal scooped out of the side of a West Virginia mountain.

I know because when I’m on Facebook there’s a picture of these gorgeous Swarovski’s crystal earrings that pop up with the tantalizing, unwritten subliminal message, “Buy me! You know you want to, Linda Zern, Prime member since . . .”

Facebook knows about those earrings because Amazon blabbed. 

The earrings are beautiful.

For fun, I was poking around on Amazon and putting virtual stuff in my virtual shopping cart, which is like putting air into dreams, wrapped in fog made of wishes. None of it is real. 

Doesn’t matter. Amazon has mined my brain full of wishes, and now I see pictures of crystal blue persuasion every place I look.

I should be mad. I’m not. But I have become determined to not click on anything that my grandchildren might see when I’m checking poorly spelled memes on Facebook.

Hero (aged three) saw the earrings ghosting up and down the side of my computer and said, “Those are good.” 

Aren’t they just?

Mostly, I was glad I had NOT been shopping for ‘body shapers,’ which are old fashion girdles wrapped in more and extra spandex and fresh marketing . . .

Or booby bras as the grand boys call them, laughing wildly.

Or the giant bottles of glucosamine PILLS I buy to lubricate my rusty bones which leads to the bad drug, good drug discussion. 

Or the books with lusty bodice ripping covers I buy for “research” purposes.

Or her birthday present.

The things you have to worry about in this twenty-first century are many and silly. 

NEVER SHOP FOR STUFF YOU DON’T WANT OTHER PEOPLE TO KNOW ABOUT ON THE COMPUTER—EVER.

MAYBE NEVER SHOP.

I would do a Google search for “Guy in Trench Coat Selling Watches” but I’m afraid of what will pop up . . . or out . . . or off.

Maybe it’s time to go back to raising sheep for their hairy bits, spinning those hairy bits into strings, and weaving those strings together into poncho shapes. It’s time consuming, but it’s private.

I’m not sure where I’d even find blue crystals that I could hammer into ear bobs. Do you grow crystals? Or mine them? Or hatch them from crystal egg laying birds? But that’s a worry for a post-Internet world. 


Linda (Dream Weaver) Zern 

ANXIOUSLY ENGAGED

The universe does not respect me. I know this because nothing good I do goes unpunished. Ever. I want to be a doer of good deeds. I want to be known as a good person. But I’m over it. I’m just going to be a mean girl. The universe likes mean girls. I’m sure of it.

While running errands, which I hate to do, I took a phone call from my husband. He had a request—more errands. Please pick up my prescription at the store, which sells such things. Trying to be a doer of good deeds, I agreed.

I pulled into the drive-through. Can the world get more convenient? The mind boggles.

At the window I answered the questions, knew the right address, recited the correct birth date and shoved the cash into the convenient sliding drawer.

A gust of wind sucked the **twenty out of the convenient sliding drawer.

The girl behind the window looked stricken.

I opened my truck door, which hit the convenient sliding drawer, giving me approximately six inches to slide out between the building and my truck. Another gust of wind blew the twenty under the truck. I felt stricken. Thought about cussing.

I dropped to my knees to climb under the truck.

Coming up with the money, I cried out triumphantly, and smacked my head on the convenient sliding drawer.

I quit thinking about cussing.

It was all so convenient; I almost died.

And then I got the flu.

Mean girls, now that’s the way to live. Make a sex tape and get wildly rich, famous, and discussed.

Linda (Get It Yourself) Zern

** It used to be a ten before that Affordable Act deal.

     

Dancing on Graves

When I was little I got in trouble for walking on a dead man. I was four. And I was walking through a cemetery. 

The dead man’s widow pointed to the rectangle outlined in white stones on the ground and said, “That’s my husband and you’re walking on him.” I looked down and saw a rectangle outlined in white stones.

I was four and confused.

My mother was older than four and weirded-out by my love of cemeteries. The graveyard was across the street from the apartment we lived in, and I would beg her to go there for walks. I still remember crossing the street to walk in the cemetery. 

She couldn’t figure me out. 

It wasn’t the dead people that I loved to visit. It was the flowers. The cemetery was the one place in the city that had flowers, and I couldn’t get enough of them, even at four. 

It’s still true.

My grandchildren recently asked me, “YaYa, are seeds alive?” Ahhh, such a good question. 

I said, “They will be with the right amount of dirt, water, and sun, and someone that cares enough to fuss with them. And then look out . . . you’ll have flowers . . . someday. It takes time.”

I watched grandchildren scrabble through the dirt, and turn over stones, looking for whatever might be under there, and I thought about seeds needing dirt, water, sun, and someone who cared enough to fuss with them . . . and time enough for the blooming.

It’s almost magic, growing stuff. Isn’t it? It may be a slow magic that can take a lifetime but then there are flowers, even at the cemetery, and they can make you want to dance on graves. 

Linda (Flower Child) Zern