Head in the Sand ... and other unpopular positions

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2010 by Linda M. Au

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system (whatever that is) or transmitted in any form or
by any means without the prior written permission of the author,
except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. A
really positive, glowing
review.

ISBN: 9781301351244

Visit Linda online:

The Other Side of
the
Desk

http://www.lindamaubooks.com

Follow Linda on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/LindaMAu

“Like” Author Linda M Au on Facebook

This book is also available in trade paperback.

Cover design by Lynne H. Gordon

Back cover photo by Hope A. Bowyer

For Wayne . . .

who allows me to cannibalize my life with him without
even smiling

and

For the rest of my family and friends

(who shall remain nameless, except that I wrote about
them and didn’t change their names) . . .

who tolerate my inappropriate people-watching and
note-taking at family gatherings

Ehh, forget about that “remain nameless” thing . .
.

This includes, but is not limited to:

Mom & Dad

Mike & Cindy

Christopher & Courtney

Jeremy

Grace

Addie

Lynne

Fara

Mel

Mary Beth

Ginnie

Wayne’s entire extended family

The Deep Creek Four (Sarah, Jeannine, Chris &
me)

First Word and St. Davids

CritClub, especially ChopOMatic & Myriam

Easton Area High School (circa late-1970s)

The entire RPCNA

The Warpies writers

The gang at Movie Forums

The AlphaSmart group on Flickr

Café Kolache, where many of these essays were
written

And the Award Goes to . . .

Foreword, by Patricia Lorenz

Introduction

Dear Santa . . .

Even Jesus Doesn’t Save Everything

Rash Behavior

Tightening Your Belt

Brave New World . . Scared Old Mom

The Rule of Law in Florida

Three Sheets to the Wind

What Happened in Vegas, Part One

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Cement,
But Were Afraid to Ask

Buster’s Last Stand

What Happened in Vegas, Part Two

The Good, the Bad, and the Plugly

What Happened in Vegas, Part Three

Pennies in the Couch

Say Ahhh!

I’m Hoping You’ll See Less of Me

Household Chores (a poem written in childhood)

What Happened in Vegas, Part Four: Elvis Edition

Is Nyquil a Legal Drug?

Water, Water Everywhere

The Bus Stops Here

I’m Your Biggest Fan

What Happened in Vegas, Part Five

Close Encounters with Mark Spitz

O Sing of Spring! (a poem written in adulthood)

Dead Ringer

Random Things I Notice

Like Sands Through the Hourglass . . .

Hell on Wheels

Who You Callin’ Chicken?

Medieval Instruments of Torture in My Hallway

Open 23 Hours

There’s An Echo in Here

People . . . People Who Watch People

More Random Things I Notice

Stuff in My Car That Doesn’t Work

Back Me Up

Field Trip to the Drive-In

The Winter of Their Discontent

Eat’n Puke

Cinderella Understood Writers

Blood, Sweat and Tears

Still More Random Things I Notice

Gravity (an old poem now dedicated to Wayne)

Beware of Geeks Bearing Gift

Fishing for Compliments

A Blaze of Glory

Even More Random Things I Notice

Sunny Side Down

You’re Positively Glowing!

Another Foot in the Grave

Hook, Line and Sinker

Word Brain Versus Math Brain

“I Need You to Trust Me on This”

Definition of a Bad Day

Dead Lines (a poem written for no reason)

A tidy handful of the essays in this book have
already ventured out into the world. Many have been criticized . .
. I mean,
critiqued
. . . by my writers’ group, First Word,
which meets monthly in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. They gave me the
self-esteem I needed to start entering essays in contests around
the country. I am grateful to them for helping me nitpick my work
over the past few years and laughing at stuff in all the right
places (and some of the wrong ones).

Some essays have gone even further, winning awards in
those contests, a few of which actually included money. No,
seriously.

And so, since these early accolades led me to believe
I could actually write, here’s a list of awards garnered by some of
the essays in this book:

“Dear Santa . . .” won
First Place
in Humor at
the St. Davids Christian Writers’ Conference, 2005.

“Rash Behavior” won
First Place
in Humor at
the St. Davids Christian Writers’ Conference, 2003.

“Tightening Your Belt” won
Second Place
in
Humor at the St. Davids Christian Writers’ Conference, 2004.

“Brave New World . . . Scared Old Mom” won
First
Place
(and a big fat check that didn’t bounce) in Humor &
Technology at BrassRing’s launch contest, 2000.

“Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Cement,
But Were Afraid to Ask” won
First Place
in Humor at the St.
Davids Christian Writers’ Conference, 2006.

“Pennies in the Couch” won
Second Place
in
Personal Experience Feature at the St. Davids Christian Writers’
Conference, 2005.

“Say Ahhh!” won
First Place
in Life-Changing
Moment at the Mercer One-Day Writers Conference, 2003.

“Household Chores” won
Third Place
in Humorous
Poetry at the St. Davids Christian Writers’ Conference, 2008.

“O Sing of Spring!” won
Second Place
in Light
Poetry at the Mercer One-Day Writers Conference, 2010.

“Hell on Wheels” won
Honorable Mention
in
Childhood Memory at the Mercer One-Day Writers Conference,
2007.

Linda Au is the funniest woman I’ve ever met. In 2006
and 2007 I was asked to teach a few classes at the St. Davids
Writers’ Conference in Pennsylvania and Linda was one of the
conference participants. The one who left the biggest impression.
We instructors awarded Linda a number of well-deserved prizes for
her entries in the writers’ contests that week and of course I
smiled and acted all proud of her, but inside I felt the green
monster of envy building up. Mostly I envied her ability to write
humor. . . . Okay, I became insanely jealous of her enormous
talent. Then I decided if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, so I
embarked on a quest to get her to either travel with me so her
hilarious personality could rub off on me a little . . . or move to
Florida where I live so I could pick her brain and spend my last
forty to fifty years on earth being a better, funnier writer myself
because of her.

I dreamed of having Linda Au as my sidekick, sailing
with me through life, getting into all sorts of trouble, having
adventures, exploring the world and yes, both of us writing funny,
funny stuff which we could critique for each other in coffee shops
drinking tea and howling uproariously. I suggested a writers-only
cruise with some of our favorite writer friends. What I was
thinking was, Hey, maybe if she spends a week with me on the open
seas that’ll convince her to uproot her family and move to Florida
where we could be writing buddies forever, BFFs with a writing
clause.

So far none of my grand schemes have worked. We
haven’t gone on a cruise together, traveled together, nor has she
moved to Florida. Having come close to being selected to be on
Survivor
one year, she did convince me to also apply to be a
contestant. How did she know I’d been dreaming of being on that
show since season one? See what I mean about how much Linda and I
have in common? So I applied in my 64th year because she told me
they were looking for older women. That too, never came to be. They
probably looked at my video and decided I was better off watching
the sunsets on the beach than digging for oysters with my bare
hands and living on coconut juice.

Meanwhile, I have gone on to write a few more books
and Linda continues to tell me that she’s definitely planning to
retire to Florida someday partly because her husband has close
family in this section of paradise. I’ll believe it when I get the
phone call: “Hey, meet me at the coffee shop and bring your laptop.
I have some great ideas for a book we can do together.”

All I can say about this woman author is this: She’s
funnier than me. She’s younger than me. She’s a better writer than
me. She’s smarter than me. Her best quirk is that she is a
spelling-grammar-copy-editor-proofreader genius, having made her
living for awhile as an editor and she’s going to pitch a holy fit
when she reads the four sentences in front of this one because
she’ll say it should be “She’s funnier than I.” But I think it
sounds better with “me.” And since she asked me to write this
foreword to her book, I get to say whatever I want and she can’t
change it. At least I think that’s the way it works. I’m doubled
over right now slapping my thighs. Which are bigger than hers, by
the way.

I love this book. This funny, funny book. (Note the
incomplete sentence, Linda?) Every story is funny. The way Linda Au
looks at life should be bottled and sold as a panacea for eternal
youth. I bet she never gets ulcers because of her funny, irreverent
outlook on every single event in her life, big or small. She makes
things like her husband’s tool chest and his TV-watching habits
funny as all get-out. You need a tissue when you read this book to
mop up the laughing tears. She makes teaching her mom how to use a
computer, the art of folding sheets, a letter to Santa, renewing
her wedding vows in Vegas, a head cold, a water bed, a wedding
ring, soap operas, roller-skating, people-watching, bathrobes,
fishing trips, and even lunch at the nuclear power plant the
funniest things since whoopee cushions were placed on all the
nursing home chairs. You’re going to love this book and no doubt
you’ll be as jealous of Linda Au as I am. After you finish reading
it, please write to Linda and tell her it’s time she moved to
Florida.

Patricia Lorenz

Author of a dozen books,

including
Life’s Too Short To Fold Your
Underwear

www.PatriciaLorenz.com

Hi. Welcome to my book.
Pull up a chair and stay a while. I like your hair like that. And I
love those shoes. Okay, enough flattery. We’re moving on
now.

You don’t have to be a wife or mother, as I
am, to identify with the stuff in this book. You just have to know
a wife or a mother. That’s close enough.

I’d love to say that
everything in this book is completely true . . . or that everything
in this book is completely made up. Either way I’m going to be in a
boatload of trouble with
somebody
. So, to keep from being
lynched in the restroom of the local craft store, let me assert
with unabashed honesty that everything in this book is as true as
it needs to be in order to be funny. When starting each of these
essays, my goal was to exaggerate when necessary to keep the humor
up around belly-button level (because belly-buttons are
funny).

Imagine my surprise to find out just how
little I had to exaggerate once I really got rolling. These people
I grew up with and hang out with and live with are just naturally
funny. Well, from a slight distance, anyway. They just don’t know
it yet.

Still, I’ll leave the specifics of exactly
which parts are true and which merely further the cause of humor up
to you, dear reader. Because nobody I’ve mentioned in this book is
going to admit to anything. Not without a lot of coaxing and a
cashier’s check.

So, now that the legal garbage is out of the
way, just who do I think I am writing this stuff? A little
background: I was raised in the sixties and seventies by a mother
who drove a Fiero in the eighties and listened to Pink Floyd and a
father who drove a pickup truck and listened to Johnny Cash.
Somehow, all that genetic material added up to me.