Dear Readers,

    The hardest part of being a writer of “fictional” humor, or as I like to call my work, tall tales from a short lady, is the uncontrollable imagination that goes with my job.  I cannot do, see, or think anything anymore without imagining 1) the irony of it all, 2) the “what if” factor, or 3) the cataclysmic cascade of ballooning doom phenomenon.

    For example, I flipped myself over backwards in my son’s wheelchair Saturday smashing the back of my head into a cement barn floor.  And instead of being reasonably embarrassed or chagrined as any reasonable person would be, I started to laugh uncontrollably in a most unreasonable fashion at the total irony of the situation if I had, in fact, been paralyzed by a wheelchair. I remember thinking, as I checked my head for contusions or gushing, how funny would that be?  I could actually hear my children saying, “Yeah, that’s our mom. She was paralyzed by a wheelchair.” 

    (Personal note: My son uses the wheelchair as a dolly for the making of movies and not as a personal conveyance and please don’t think that I think that wheelchairs are funny—I just think my experience with a single wheelchair is funny.  See!  There I go again imagining you being offended because I told this story about myself falling over backwards in a wheelchair and being paralyzed—and not that I think that being paralyzed is funny because it’s way not funny, but I’m pretty sure that I would be one of those people who make wisecracks about themselves and their physical challenges, because I do that now, unless of course I became a bitter, dried up hermit who lives alone with a Siamese cat that I dress up in doll clothes because I can’t come to terms with the fact that I paralyzed myself by flipping over backwards in a wheelchair.)

    Whew!  See how exhausting this problem can be.

    And don’t even get me started on sheet metal.

    Sheet metal is deadly, and I’m not kidding.  In the process of putting a new roof on my potting shed—alone, by myself, without human aid. (This last bit was just for informational purposes and in no way expresses any disgust with members of my family).  I have become a great deal more knowledgeable about sheet metal than I had been in the past. Sheet metal can be purchased at your local Home Depot and transported to your home by loading a dozen or so sheets in the back of your truck and having your son-in-law sit on them so that they don’t skitter out of the back of your truck into downtown traffic.  In the actual loading of, sitting on, and un-loading of the sheet metal your son-in-law will comment, “Boy this stuff is sharp.” He will know this because the sheet metal will be covered with hundreds of warning stickers saying, Sheet Metal Edges are Sharp!! And he will cut himself.

    Later, during the week, when I am single handedly—alone, by myself, without human aid—lifting, hefting, shoving, and pushing individual sheets of sheet metal onto my potting shed I realize that if I stumble at the crucial juncture where the sheet metal is only resting on the roof, but not attached to the roof, and I let go of the sheet metal it could come sliding back toward my neck and I could quite possibly cut off my own head, and wouldn’t that be the craziest thing ever.  Then I start to imagine different scenarios where I don’t cut my head off completely, but I only wound myself—badly. Could I staunch the bleeding with a banana leaf from the banana tree next to the potting shed and would I have time to drag myself to the telephone in the house wearing a banana leaf tourniquet?

    Where upon I stop what I’m doing, go into the house, get my cell phone, call my husband who is out of town, and complain that I never get any help around the house.  He will be extremely confused. 

    (Personal note:  Sheet metal can get hot enough to melt your flesh and if the sun hits it just right the resulting death ray will burn your retina’s out.)

    The cataclysmic cascade of ballooning doom phenomenon (# 3) is a mother’s and a grandmother’s best friend. It is the ability to project one’s imagination so far into the future that you can say to a child or grandchild, “I’m telling you that if you pick up that crayon when I told you not to, you are going to wind up in the state penitentiary—on death row . . . next.”  And if pressed, you could make the connection between this seemingly innocuous act of childish disobedience and the commission of a felony requiring the  penalty of death somewhere in the child’s distant future. But having this ability isn’t really because I’m a writer it’s because I am a mother and grandmother, so maybe it shouldn’t be discussed in this email? Let me think about that.

    There you have it. Another reason why it’s better to be you than me. Let us rejoice. Unless of course that knock on the front door isn’t the UPS guy at all, but someone from my forgotten past who got my address off of the Internet Geo-Search and has tracked me down to .  .  . help me put the roof on my potting shed.

Linda (Knock, Knock) Zern 

     

   

   

   

   

     

   

  

Linda L. Zern (All Me All the Time)

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