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 |  It's who we are. It's what we stare at in the middle of the night. It's a bug zapper. |
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My friends, When we were young and newly hatched—also young and in love—my husband and I lived with our four young children on the Space Coast of Florida. The massive propulsion of rocket and shuttle launches from Cape Kennedy often rocked the windows and doors of our little love cottage. We were always properly respectful and impressed by the reach of mankind’s achievements. It was a point of pride to stop whatever we were doing (dishes, dinner, dancing, sleeping, fist fighting, etc.) to watch the eastern horizon—hands on hearts, tears in eyes—as the United States of America raced into the frontier of space. One deep, dark morning (about 2:00 am) I shook my husband awake to watch yet another triumph of human advancement. “Get up,” I mumbled to Sherwood, “the shuttle’s going up. We gotta’ watch.” Sherwood moaned, “The garbage is out all ready. Let me die.” He did not open his eyes. “Come on. We should watch. Night launches are amazing.” He dragged himself upright and clung to the window ledge behind our bed. We knelt, with our chins braced on the ledge, our bleary eyes fixed on a blazing light in the eastern sky. We watched. The light did not appear to move. We stared some more. The light remain fixed. We struggled to focus. The light blazed away. We waited for the light to fade into the blackness of space. It did not. We watched and watched and watched. The light stubbornly refused to move. At last, collapsing back into my pillow I said, “Honey, go back to sleep.” Sounding confused, miffed, and a little whiney Sherwood asked, “Why?” “Because for the last eight to ten minutes we’ve been staring at our next door neighbor’s bug zapper.” He went back to sleep. And I lived to worship at the altar of space exploration another day. This story pretty much sums up who we are, and how we got this way—excessive staring at bug zappers. And this is my blog, a space-age way of recording one’s thoughts, ideas, embarrassments, and foibles for the entire known world. Once upon a time, I would have made this record on papyrus, rolled it up, stuffed it into a ceramic jar, and asked to have the whole thing buried with me in my sarcophagus. I still might. Disclaimer: Some of the stuff you will read here is true. Some of it is not. Some of it is the result of wishful thinking. Some of it is the result of too much thinking, and some of it is the result of too little thinking. But all of it will be written with joy and laughter, because the alternative is despair and weeping, and isn’t there more than enough of that stuff out there? Thank you for your support, Linda (Zippity the Zapped) Zern |
| I don't need end of life counseling from Dave the Desk Sitting bureaucrat. I already have an end of life plan that involves the Gulf Stream, a boat, and a superficial understanding of sailing. According to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence or NICE – the United Kingdom’s Version of A Death Panel—figuring out if Granny is worth the cash necessary to keep her hip from falling off is easy. There’s a formula. . . . by taking the cost of treatment and dividing it by the years gained an overall cost benefit ratio can be determined as the ‘cost per quality – adjusted life year gained’ or CQG. That is a direct quote taken straight from literature written by NICE!!!! I can’t make this up. See those letters—CQG—you know what that is? I know what it is. It’s algebra. They are using algebra to figure out if it’s worth it to keep me in watery Jell-O and estrogen patches. It’s the hated, evil creepiness of algebra as it pertains to the lump on my personal arm, my health care, and the fact that the women of my family live for absolutely ever and ever. My great-grandmother was climbing farm fences at the age of ninety-one, because she couldn’t see well enough to find the gates. So if you calculate my “cost per quality—adjusted life year gained” I could cost the “collective good” more money to insure than two or three hundred homeless potheads in Colorado. It’s algebra. It’s math. And you can’t argue with algebra, math, or the people at NICE. My DNA lives forever. It’s horrible. I have barnacles, because it’s a pure fact that if the boat sits in the water long enough, it’s going to get barnacles and require dry docking and scraping. I have barnacles. I’m a big-ticket item—health care wise. So here’s how my CQG, if I lived in England, would go. My age (fifty-plus) multiplied by my genetic propensity for eternal life, divided by the number of scars on my person from malicious cancer (a bunch—also more than a pirate) over the coefficient of the number of barnacles found on the average rowboat bobbing off the coast of any Bahamian island equals—pull the plug already. I told my doctor that if any future barnacle lumps turn out to be a malignant anything, then I’m renting a sail boat, sailing into the Gulf Stream, and jumping off the back. She said, “That’s kind of extreme; don’t you think? And why the Gulf Stream?” “Because the Gulf Stream is warm. I don’t do cold, and besides I’d like to donate my share of the universal health care pie to someone with less barnacles—also I believe in life, without barnacles, after death.” "I'll have the front desk schedule your surgery." "Nice!" I said. And now that America has decided to go the way of all the other cool countries with death panels, I think we should call our death panel either: SWELL—Seeing Ways to Eliminate Little Old Ladies or GULF—Giving Up on Leftover Folks. Linda (NICE is as NICE does) Zern |
| According to a special documentary on “body language” over ninety percent of all human communication is non-verbal. (As I type this, my shoulders are very pinched and close to my ears.) Everyone lies. I am told that this is true, because people have seen it on a t-shirt and a fictional character on television repeats it a lot. (At this point, my lips are pursed, emphasizing the fine lines and fissures into which my lipstick tends to pour.) Therefore, if everyone lies and ninety percent of communication is non-verbal then forget about what’s coming out of people’s lips and concentrate on what’s happening between their eyes. (A wrinkle shaped like a cavern just deepened near my left eye.) I hate lying. I love liars. (My right eye is twitching so hard I can hear it.) That is a lie. I don’t love liars. I try to love liars in the “love the sinner, hate the sin” way, but it’s hard, because liars tend to lie, and they can’t be trusted with your automobiles, wallet, lawn mower, good name, daughters, or your female cat, and she’s been spayed. I continue to try to love liars, but it’s a struggle. No, it’s not a struggle; that’s a lie. It’s more like a wrestle—Greco/Roman style. Liars are exhausting, because you have to listen to them lying and “read” their body language all at the same time. Or if you’re not around when the liar is lying then you have to hire someone to watch the liar lie, and if you live in a particularly dishonest society, eventually you will run out of people, to watch the people, who are supposed to be watching the people—in case the people are lying or plagiarizing or faking important governmental reports. (See? It’s exhausting.) So, if it’s true that everyone lies then we’re screwed. Linda (Telling the Truth Since 1958) Zern |
| We have a very strict policy about talking to strangers; we don’t. Unless they talk to us first at Tractor Supply, need to check our funky looking moles while Doctor Mark is on vacation, or are cooking our pizza. Strangers ain’t all bad, just the bad ones are, but I have no talent for telling one from the other crooks, cheats, and mad dog killers. Sherwood, the husband around here, is great at identifying skunks and scammers. I’m not sure it counts though; he suspects everyone constantly of everything always. He’s a hard case. I admit to having weak stranger-danger moxie. I’m pretty sure that everyone raises butterflies and enjoys watching goldfish swim. I like to walk the extra mile and give people my coat/cloak/Banana Republic shrug, and then they punch me in the eye. I’m a dolt. It’s true. I’ve befriended a few mad dog losers over the years. One young teenage scammer turned out to be living a secret life. It wasn’t a secret life of charity work in Calcutta with Mother Teresa helping Untouchables. No. It turned out he was the local, neighborhood porn distributor to under aged children and kittens. Why is it that people living secret lives are never living GOOD secret lives? Sigh. So now, there’s a whole world of scam artists and mad dog killers living secret lives, wandering around, out there . . . in the virtual world of my computer. I’m still a dolt. Guy emailed me because he found my profile “interesting.” Wanted to be buddies. I saw that we have one mutual friend. I think, “Sure. Sure. Okay, here’s my coat and my watch, but it needs a battery.” So I responded. “Sure, I’ll be your friend unless, of course, you’re a mad dog killer, then no; I have to draw the line somewhere.” Har. Har. Har. He replied and thanked me for my “kind” response. And then he emailed me his entire life story. A plot that I’m pretty sure I recognized from a romance novel I read in the eighties. (Rich, successful, widower, lives on or near a boat, darling little girl, looking for women . . . friends.) What? My response wasn’t kind. It was funny and quirky and mildly rude like everything else I write. But it was not kind. Bells went off. I ran the cyber incident by my son-in-law. He said, “Sounds like Scammy McScammer from Scammers.com. Why did you answer him?” “I don’t know. I was thinking about butterflies.” “That’s your problem right there. Start thinking about the Craig’s List Killer.” Very wise. Very wise. But it’s so tempting as a writer and maker up of plot twists and red herring runs not to write to Scammy McScammer and say, “Oh, Scammy, my husband was kidnapped by Barbary pirates twelve years ago and declared (dramatic pause followed by the sound of lace muffled sniffling) dead after seven years after which I wore basic black for five years, and now I’m a wildly young, mildly beautiful, achingly lonely widow, who is RICH.” You know, scam the scammer. Except this guy is probably on the up and up and that would just make me a virtual jerk. So from now on my response to these inquiries will have to be. “Nope. No friend for you.” Linda (Mooncalf) Zern |
| In a great big modern world where travel is supersonic and tweets are faster than lightning that is greased, it’s important to be savvy about the kidnap policies of modern Barbary Pirates, the ransom demands of Somali warlords, and the acceptable amount of time that the terribly young and wildly attractive widow should wait before cashing the life insurance checks. What!? Listen, the Malaysian government lost an entire, complete, gigantic 747 airliner. My husband has been known to fly on these planes. Big plane goes bye, bye. Husband goes bye, bye. We have to have a ransom/kidnapping/disappeared-off-the-face-of-the-earth policy! In the days of Queen Victoria pirates sailed around looking for loot and according to a guy named Wiki: The main purpose of their [pirates called Barbary] attacks was to capture Christian slaves for the Ottoman slave trade as well as the general Muslim market in North Africa and the Middle East. Today, pirates are still looking for loot and cash and slaves, but those are mostly for sex. Ransom is big. Kidnapping is a career choice. And when my husband flies off to the ends of the earth to help foreign companies figure out their software knots and tangles, I occasionally contemplate the pirate possibilities. So here’s the discussion behind the policy: “So the Malaysians lost a whole airplane,” I observed. “Don’t you fly on that jetliner loosing Malasian airline?” “Yep.” My husband said. He never complicates our conversations with excessive word use. “So, what’s the policy? How long should I wait before I cash the life insurance check?” He looked up from his laptop. He was intrigued. I could tell. “Okay, here’s the deal. All the desk dwellers are probably going to dither around if they can’t find any floating seat cushions or Skymall catalogs, but Oracle is still going to have to pay me until they declare me dead. CASH THE CHECKS FAST.” “Got it.” We both went back to tap, tap, tapping on assorted keyboards. “Okay, so what if you’re taken captive by angry maroons posing as pirates looking for the pin number to our checking account? What’s our policy? To negotiate or not to negotiate.” “No negotiations.” “What if they grab you, torture you, record it, and send me the hideous Youtube video.” “No negotiations and no second mortgages.” “Okay, but you have to promise me that you’ll be so obnoxious they’ll kill you all the way dead right off, so I won’t have to worry about you wasting away in a flea infested hut.” “Got it.” “But what if they sell you as a sex slave?” He pondered. “I’ll do my best to make my escape.” He re-pondered. “Or not.” “And who should I sue?” “Everyone.” “Got it.” So that’s our policy. Cash the checks fast. No negotiations. No second mortgages. And sue everyone. When I tell people our family policy on kidnapping they tend to be shocked by our cavalier attitude toward tragedy and piracy in general. Then I tell them how rich I’ll be when I cash the checks, and they’re mollified—also a little jealous. Because money fixes everything, just ask a Barbary pirate. Linda (Can’t Buy Me Love) Zern |
| When you hear yourself screaming, “Sherwood, grab the hose; the dog is on fire!” you know that you are—once again—the butt of some giant cosmic joke, not to mention the dog. We are country folk. We sit outside a lot. We make fires. We own dogs. We sit outside around fires with our dogs. It’s a lifestyle. You have to respect it. (If we sat outside naked, beating tom-toms while reciting cowboy poetry with our dogs you’d have to respect that too—if it’s a lifestyle. That’s what I have learned in college.) I am a lazy fire pit builder. I like to hearken back to my Native American heritage by slapping a random length of wood onto the fire, letting the ends hang over the sides. When the log burns in half, you shove the ends in. Easy, peasy. Others in my family would rather court hernias by slapping logs against trees, whacking branches on the ground, or slamming hunks of solid wood over their knees to try to produce the “correct” size. Mostly, they just look like learning-disabled Sasquatches. It’s fun to watch. The downside to my method of fire building is that blazing hunks of junk sometimes fall out of the fire pit, raining down like space junk reentering the atmosphere. Sometimes blazing hunks of junk fall into the dog’s tail. No, not sometimes—once, it happened once. What I learned when the dog’s tail caught on fire: I have the reaction time of a Navy SEAL, Sarah, my daughter-in-law who is very pregnant, does not have the reaction time of a Navy SEAL, and my husband is . . . a learning-disabled Sasquatch. CoCo, my very hairy collie/retriever mix, had cuddled up to the fire pit when a blazing bit of junk fell out of the fire into her very hairy tail bits. Her tail fluff began to smoke. She was oblivious. I leapt out of my chair and screamed, “The dog is on fire!” Sarah screamed and tried not to wet her pants. Sherwood continued playing Angry Birds on his machine. The dog’s tail blazed up. Reacting like a ninja taking vitamin B-12, I started kicking sand onto the dog’s tail. I continued screaming, “Sherwood, get the hose—the dog is on fire!” CoCo remained oblivious. She may have been playing Angry Birds in her head. A smell straight from Dante’s Inferno rolled over me. Coughing bitter coughs, I started to stomp on the dog’s tail. She lifted her head, confused. Sarah continued screaming and doing Kegel exercises. I stomped on the dog until a giant chunk of frizzled, singed tail fuzz fell out of her tail. She got up, walked to the opposite side of the fire pit, flopped into the sand, and fell asleep—probably wondering when I’d had my stroke. Sherwood looked up from his machine, annoyed that I was yelling at him. “What did you want me to do about it?” he said. I thought about becoming an angry bird and pecking him to death. I threw more wood into the fire pit instead. CoCo snored. Sarah tried to catch her breath. Our lifestyle continued. And you have to respect that or be labeled a judgmental, diversity-hating, cowboy poetry bigot. Linda (Fire Retardant) Zern |
| Born in a more primitive time, I grew up too white. Literally too white. Madison Avenue had decided in the rocking, rolling sixties that tan was sexy and young and healthy. They advertised Coppertone suntan lotion (SPF -12) on huge billboards, with a picture of a darling baby with a fabulous tan. You could tell because a dog was pulling down the baby’s swimsuit bottom, exposing its excessively white baby butt. Now, no one wants to be the color of a white butt, even if it is cute and belongs to a baby. So we cooked ourselves in the noonday sun like mad dogs and Englishmen. Forty years later our dermatologists rejoice and buy vacation homes in the Caribbean where they use gallons of sunscreen. I have since learned the importance of sunscreen. However, I still want to be tan, because, no matter what I do, I am the color of a butt. But this is the 21st century, and now it’s possible before vacationing in the Caribbean to be sprayed, by a giant robot sprayer machine. It sprays a fine mist of SOMETHING over you until you are the color of a newborn starfish. I can finally look sexy, young, and healthy—for a starfish. What follows are my Spray Tan Chronicles: SPRAY TAN, DAY ONE: I was so orange people thought I actually was a starfish and kept trying to throw me back into the ocean. SPRAY TAN, DAY TWO: Tan has settled down a bit, although Triggerfish occasionally try to nibble on me. SPRAY TAN, DAY THREE: I just want my top half (that looks like it was raised in an Easy Bake Oven) to match my bottom half (that looks like it was raised by reindeer—reindeers live in the snow, snow is white, so . . .) Is that too much to ask? SPRAY TAN, DAY FOUR (In defense of fake tans): Excessive whiteness, truly a first world problem . . . the girls and I went to get a spray tan because we can. Because it's fun. Because we're not fleeing across miles and miles of God forsaken land to escape the brutal corruption and wickedness of failing nations and states and politicians—yet. For fun, that’s why, and because we still can--for now. SPRAY TAN, DAY FIVE: Too relaxed to lift my head to check on condition of tan. Will attempt to lift head tomorrow. I call this the Caribbean vacation vortex or fake tan conundrum—get tan for vacation, then vacation causes you to cease to care if you have arms or legs or skin. And so the tan fades. Oh don’t worry, I’m pretty sure that fake tans and Caribbean sun will be the least of our worries very, very soon, what with all the sensible policies proffered by our dear leaders in Washington, leading to a new era of vacationing dignitaries as they visit their dachas by the sea. Linda (Color Me Burned) Zern |
| Florida is hot. Florida is humid. Florida is buggy. Florida is where I was born. Florida got its name from an invading, European, Spanish dude looking for a fountain that would Botox his whole body. He never found it; heat, humidity, and bugs, those he found, oh, and flowers. That’s what the word Florida means. “Wow, check out all the flowers and the Native Americans that are not European or Spanish hiding behind the flowers. Let’s get ‘em.” Thus we learn that the first bad guys in the story of Florida were Spanish. After that, no one came to Florida unless they were running away from still more Spanish people, followed by French people, and then the sons of English snobs and, eventually, Big Gov. Florida became a kind of no man’s land guarded by bugs. No. Seriously. BUGS. A couple of brave descendents of those first jerky Europeans, who owned or had stolen some cattle, tried to settle Florida. Mosquitoes killed them—the cows. True story, and not from biting them to death like you might think. Nope. Early settlers who tried to rape and pillage Florida like the Spanish reported that there were so many mosquitoes that their cattle died—FROM SUFFICATION because of CLOUDS of bugs, actual CLOUDS. It’s true. The bugs, reproducing like rabbits in the heat and humidity, were so plentiful they flew up the invading cow’s noses and smothered them. Their owners turned around and went back to winter, spring, summer, and fall and started a war between the states. Then the Timeshare vacation club was invented by the children of Europeans,, and a guy named Flagler built a railroad. This was after the mosquito cloud survivors had returned north and reported, “It’s a nice place to visit but you don’t want to live there.” Then President Kennedy, the child of Irish white people, gave an awesome speech about kicking the Russians butts and racing them to the moon, so my father, a West Virginian child of white Irish people and a Black Foot Indian woman, moved to the Space Coast, after marrying my mother because her dad owned a bar that her family called “The Tavern.” And I was born in Florida. I believe in two seasons, hot and hotter. I consider bug spray a gift from God. I don’t drink water; I breathe it. My muscles are wiry and strong, because the air in Florida is heavier than normal air. My blood is thin. When the space shuttle stopped flying, a little piece of me died. Mosquitoes don’t bite me anymore. My blood is nasty. The word is out. Sunshine can make me high. The smell of rot and swamp brings me comfort. Oh, and I LOVE flowers. Linda (Child of Vikings and Black Foot Savages, so look out!) Zern |
| When I realized that my third and second graders could not read, write, or compute basic mathematics, I took them out of public school and began homeschooling. No one seemed worried that they were growing up to be illiterate dunces. A lot of people were very concerned that they would not be “socialized” properly or get to go to the prom. As their mother, I was more concerned about phonics than cummerbunds. Over the years, I have found the socialization arguments . . . well . . . muddled. What exactly is socialization? And will I recognize it when I see it? “I hate my family,” the young college student said, flipping a trendy fringe of hair out of his eyes. “But they’re paying for my college so I’ve got to go home for Thanksgiving. What a pisser.” Wanting to be social, I tried to figure out how to respond. Be curious about others, that’s my favorite social strategy. “Maybe you should pay for your own college?” “Are you nuts?” I thought it might be possible. In a moment of companionable socialization, I shared with some of my classmates that college algebra was giving me hives and panic attacks. A highly social young man offered to help. He whipped out his cell phone. “Just put this,” he said, holding up his phone, “in your sock and then I’ll show you how to get the answers for the test by texting.” “You’re assuming I can text,” I said. “Are you nuts?” he said. No, I thought, just arthritic—and honest. Recently, before class, I was chatting socially with a few of my young college classmates. One highly social young man (I know he was social because he NEVER stopped talking about himself) began regaling us with tales of his high school cheating years. “Yeah, so I had the answers written on my arm, from my wrist to my juggler vein.” He laughed. “When the teacher got wise to it, I smeared the answers off, destroying the evidence.” Everyone joined in his clever, social laughing. “Don’t you feel bad about cheating your way through high school?” I asked. “Are you nuts?” Apparently. When my wildly educated professors use the “F” word in class or hilariously cop to having smoked dope once, twice, or always, I realize that they’re just trying to be hip and social and one with the organism known as “the group.” I get it. I was social creature once. Now, I’m just nuts, because I don’t care what the group thinks about my being a drug free, sober, religious, monogamous, honest chick. It’s not social. I know. But it does allow me to sleep better at night. Besides, I’m the one those people try to cheat off of . . . the jerks. Linda (Eyes On Your Own Paper) Zern |
| “Take American Sign Language,” my oldest daughter was happy to suggest. Easy for her to say, her fingers didn’t look like curly cheese puffs. “I can’t. I fear my window of opportunity on that form of communication has passed.” I held up my curly cheese puff shaped fingers as evidence. “My fingers are all used up because of arthritis! See! My knuckles are on fire, my fingers look like they’re tired of being part of my hand, and I’m afraid I’ll get counted down for a poorly formed alphabet.” “How about Spanish?” She suggested as a default language to satisfy my college foreign language requirements. “I tried that, and apparently you have to be able to speak Spanish to study Spanish.” On the first day of attempting to “take” college Spanish, the teacher looked right into my Irish freckles and at my knobby arthritic knuckles and busted into Spanish. I couldn’t even find the page in the book she was referencing, because I DON’T SPEAK SPANISH. It was distressing to the point of making my knucklebones ache, and I dropped the class as fast as my throbbing fingers could punch the computer keys. The entire dilemma made me so mad, I wanted to make an obscene gesture by extending my index finger at the computer screen and, in the colloquial, “shoot a bird.” However, I did not “shoot a bird” for the following reasons: A) I am a lady. Not only am I a lady, I am a southern lady and a southern lady does not make obscene gestures with her hands, feet, or other physical extremities. A southern lady expresses her anger through polite sarcasm and by writing lengthy novels about fictional towns where all the inhabitants are bat stone crazy. B) My hand looks less than attractive when I extend my index finger in the classic symbol of sexual disdain and/or invitation. I know, because I’ve practiced the middle finger gesture in the mirror, and it’s just not flattering to my hand, probably because of my enlarged knuckles due to arthritis. C) I have never felt comfortable with the actual meaning of the gesture in question. What does it mean? Is it an order, threat, or an invitation? And if it’s an invitation, how comfortable do I feel extending that invitation to someone I am frothing at the mouth mad at? I have never in my life made such an unladylike, ugly, ambiguous gesture—not in my entire complete life—and, I’m not prepared to start now. Which still leaves me with a quandary; what language of foreign clime should I choose to study to satisfy my college requirement so that I can become a well-rounded human being? I’m thinking Italian. I understand it’s a language and culture that requires the enthusiastic and repeated use of one’s hands. Linda (Look into my Eye) Zern |
| It’s the season of recitals: baton twirling, piano playing, dance swirling, tambourine thumping, unicycle riding . . . The land resounds with the sound of mommies and daddies applauding their children’s performances—both accomplished and halting. Children sweat. Parents yearn. Tiger Moms insist. Grandparents endure and encourage, happy to be off the parental hook for a change. It’s a lot of fun. Recitals are the cherry on the yearly parenting cake, representing thousands of miles driven over hard roads through nightmare clouds of whining. I know. I did that—drove kids thousands of tiger mom miles: dance, tumbling, synchronized swimming, Boy Scouts, Little League, church activities, school trips, library runs . . . And once through an actual DEA/FBI/CIA take down . . . No, really. An. Actual. Police. Sting. Schlepping a van full of teenager types back from a library run, I had to slam on my brakes. My Dodge Caravan fishtailed to a stop. It was that or T-bone a white Corolla that had shot out of a hedge of azaleas to our right. The car full of young men bounced across highway 426 close enough to my front bumper to be able to wash it. Teens jounced, bounced, and slammed inside their seatbelts. Everyone screamed. Mid-scream, I took a breath and thought about hitting the gas to proceed. I didn’t. A black windowless van shot from the azalea hedge after the Corolla. The side door gapped open as three (possibly thirty) men wearing BLACK hoods—WITH GUNS—braced themselves in the opening. Everyone screamed. I took a breath and tried to get the heck out of there. The white Corolla crisscrossed back in front of my Caravan. I pumped the brakes. Everyone screamed. I hit the gas. The black van crossed the highway behind us, bouncing after the Corolla. I saw the driver in my rearview mirror waving me on, out of the way of an armed police pursuit. His BLACK hood looked stuffy and hot. Screaming, I hit the gas. The Corolla cut me off again. I slammed on my brakes. Rubber burned. All the young men inside the car screamed soundlessly. The black van, bristling with hooded men, jounced after them in close pursuit. The men in the black van were not screaming, that I could tell. The screaming inside my Dodge Caravan was now continuous. I hit the gas and managed to get as far as the Gas-N-Go at the corner. Throat raw from screaming, I sailed past the sight of hooded men pouring out of the black van in the Gas-N-Go parking lot, guns drawn, descending on the white Corolla like one of the Biblical plagues of Egypt: boils, lice, flies. Take your pick. Everyone screamed. And home we went. The library books were due on the fifteenth. Linda (Take-Down) Zern |
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