Come on Down,

    I caught Sherwood, my beloved husband of twenty-eight years, doing a dangerous, dangerous thing the other day.  He was  thumbing through the checkbook—poor, foolish, doomed mortal. 

    With a volcanic frown he asked, “What happened to all the money?”

    “Adam.”  I didn’t bother to take my eyes off the Home Shopping Network, TV channel 240.

    “As in Adam, our youngest son.  You’re saying Adam happened to the money?”

    “I’m saying that Adam happened to the money,” I agreed.

    I jotted down the product number for a lovely pair of hand painted rubber rain boots—size 5 and 1/2 medium—yellow daffodil.

    “How can one person require so much money?”

    “He didn’t require it so much as the car required it, or more specifically, it was the car’s muffler that required it,” I said,  debating about writing the product number down for the matching hand painted raincoat and umbrella set—forty-nine, ninety eight on two flex pays—to go with the hand painted rain boots of course.

    “So the car’s muffler happened to the money.”  His frown deepened into a lava flow.

    “You remember, when Adam ran over that cattle guard and the muffler got caught on some weird part of the metal grate and it peeled the muffler right off that car like the skin off a grape.  Sure and then the repairman said, ‘What in the world happened to this muffler.  I’ve never seen anything like it.’ And then I had to explain to Mr. Muffler Man about cattle guards because he’s from up north and he’d never heard of a cattle guard before.  And you tried to explain to the insurance company about cattle guards being like little bridges made of pipes so cows can’t escape from a pasture, and Mrs. Insurance Lady said that the insurance company wasn’t going to cover the damage because Adam had obviously run into the cattle guard, but you kept saying, ‘No, no it isn’t something you run into; it’s something you cross over, like a bridge, like a bridge made of pipes for cows only the cows never cross it.  But she never got it.  Remember?”

    I picked up the phone to place my order with the Home Shopping Network and apply for the HSN credit card which would give me a ten percent discount on today’s purchase.

    A vague look of reluctance washed over his face as he said, “Oh yeah, right, the famous cattle grate / guard incident.”  He closed the checkbook slowly. 

    A cheerful woman at the Home Shopping Network named Donna took my order and assured me that the delivery of my yellow daffodil, hand painted rain boots would be her highest priority and probably her reason for living.  I smiled as I hung up the phone.

    “What did you just buy?”  Shock and dismay made my husband’s voice crack when he choked out the word ‘buy.’

    “Rain boots.”

    He tried to talk. He failed.

    “Rain boots, because if you expect me to go driving out to the middle of nowhere at night, and stand up to my ankles in filthy ditch water,  and wait with Adam on the side of the road for Mr. Triple A Guy to show up to tow the car dragging the muffler destroyed by a cattle guard back to town without proper footwear you are kidding yourself buddy.  Besides they’ll be here in a week to ten days—hand painted no less.”

    He put the checkbook back in my purse and muttered, “I’m beginning to see what happened to the money.”

    “Like I said.  Adam happened to it.”  I scribbled down the product number for a darling set of glass ducklings parading across a lily pad embossed with an American flag.

    The muttering continued, “Among other things.”

    “Darn kids,” I said.

    And that’s one version of the story.  There are others, but I like this one best.  After all in this version I get a new pair of boots.  Have a week free of muffler trouble and full of marked down bargain sales.

Linda (Always on Guard) Zern

PS

    Adam, the muffler killer, is working on another video project.  This time he’s gone in search of “they” (as in “they say” this, and you know what “they” think).  Who are “they?”  If you have a minute to discuss who you think “they” might be you can email him at outofsightfilms@gmail.com.  There’s also a way to create a youtube account and post a comment but I don’t understand it (www.youtube.com/outofsightfilms).



   

   

   

   

   

   

    



   

   

  

Linda L. Zern

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