Zemblan Grammar

In August 2000, I arrived in Zembla for the first time after a five-day cross-country trip with my father and brother and the UHaul of destiny. The night before we embarked on the road, I got hit in the head by a tree. Have I told that story here before? I’m not sure, but if this is a repeat, forgive me.

It was August 4th, a day that would live in infamy, or at least in disgusting lacerations all over my face. I was dropping my then-boyfriend off at his place. He got out of the car and walked across the driveway to drop some things in the trash can that was already streetside waiting to be picked up the next morning. I was futzing around getting my things from the car, and when I finally got out, I heard a loud pop just over my head. In that split second, my mind flashed back to the huge snow storm we had the Winter before — something about the sound reminded me of it. At the time I thought it was the sound of a transformer blowing, so I looked up to the power lines above me to see what was going on.

Of course, the sound had not been a transformer at all, but rather the sound of a huge tree branch snapping off. During the Winter, the snow storms had weighed down the branches, which then snapped and fell across the power lines, which in turn snapped and caused the transformers to blow. The neighborhood had been without power for a few days, and in the unusual silence that came with the absence of TVs and stereos blaring all day, the only real noises we heard were more branches snapping off the trees and crashing to the ground.

Pictures of that January snowstorm occurred to me as I looked up, only mildly curious. I didn’t have any time to react to the sight of the huge branch falling straight at my head. It whapped me in the forehead and slid down my face, leaving a messy trail of scratches down my nose and chin, then it sort of skittered down the front of me, scraping its way down my bare arms. The branch was about 10 feet long and had a diameter of maybe 8 inches at its thickest point, so the weight of it was pretty significant — it dented my car parked right beside where I was standing, and I was (and still am) a little surprised it didn’t break my nose where it hit.

I think I barely had time to scream when the boyfriend turned and saw me, and the look on his face told me I must be pretty bloody. He whisked me inside and made me sit down in the hall (”Do not look in the mirror! I will clean you up!”) while he patched me up and then proceeded to call and bitch out his landlord — the tree must have been sick or something, because there was basically no reason for that branch to have suddenly broken off like that.

The next morning I left for Zembla with a supply of vitamin E, Neosporin, and bandaids which I ritualistically applied to my face approximately every four seconds, determined not to get the kind of scar that would frighten small children and animals. (It turned out that I didn’t get a scar, although if you were to look closely at my forehead you might be able to see that the skin in the middle has a slightly different texture than the rest of it — a little weirdly smooth, but not enough that anyone would notice, I think.)

Seven years ago to the day, I woke up in a hotel room in Boise, Idaho and the gigantic scab in the middle of my forehead finally fell off, revealing a weirdly smooth, hot-pink patch of skin underneath. I kept reaching up to touch it as we drove nearer and nearer to our destination, trying, I think, to make sure the nastiness was really gone.

I arrived there with that smooth, brand-new-looking skin, but when I left almost seven years later my skin had thickened considerably. That metaphor is bad enough, so I’ll spare you some sentimental examination of how I have grown up over the years and how I learned more about myself and the music swells as I step out into the bright sunshine of a new day and a new adult life, because please. I did, though, figure a lot of things out, or at least start to.

Professionally, I am no longer going to get sucked into the literary approaches contest of Who Hates Imperialism and Patriarchy the Most, because people, I never will win that one. And personally, when it comes to toxicity in friends and boyfriends, I have learned it’s best to just let them go. I do not need people in life who do nothing but make me feel bad about myself, and neither do you. Kick them to the curb! They’re BLACKLISTED! You go, girl! Etc.

It hasn’t been all professional development and personal revelations, though, oh no. For the last three years, I have been wasting a significant amount of time writing things on the internet. That’s right, it’s the three-year anniversary of Zemblan Grammar! Over the years I have bitched a lot about my students — but hey, it was deserved. After all, this is the kind of crap they were writing. I did try to help, after all. I explained punctuation and gave helpful usage tips! All they could do in return was hide their rank essays under a pile of minty candy. Honestly, I think if some university, somewhere, would let me get away with this kind of curriculum, maybe I could make a real difference in the world. Sometimes, though, it seemed like it all would’ve been so much better to just stay under the blankets all day and hide. My colleagues in the past haven’t been much better. I mean, there are the theory-obsessed patriarchy-haters and the reductive reasoners and the philosophers, and you know how I feel about that.

Things, though, are looking up. The people in my new department seem lovely and I may have come to terms with the fact that I haven’t seen the end of “definately” just yet. Hey, maybe one day it’ll end up in the dictionary, too, just like “irregardlesss.” (Thanks, descriptivists!) By the time I am done here in New Wye, I may even have some overly dramatic extended-metaphor-type story to tell about the hit-and-run accident I got in right before I embarked on this most recent cross-country trip. I’ll have to save that for another year, though.

To all of you who have been around over the years, thanks for reading. You guys rule.