"Lost and Not Found"

By Jerry Zezima

My eyes aren’t what they used to be. In fact, they used to be martini olives. Those were the days!

The sad fact is that I can’t find anything anymore. I don’t just mean small things, like a screwdriver (the tool, not vodka and orange juice, which are in the liquor cabinet and the refrigerator, respectively). I mean big things.

Like my car.

Whenever I leave it in a parking lot to run an errand or go to the gym, I can’t find it when I come back out.

Even if I make a mental note of which row I parked in, the car is never there. I know it hasn’t been stolen because my license plate, JZEE, which my wife, Sue, got for me years ago, would be easy to trace.

I am convinced that instead of car thieves, there are now car movers, prankish people who start my car and drive it to another parking space so I can’t find it.

Another reason could be that my memory, or what’s left of it, is also pulling pranks on me. I base this theory on the fact that my car, which I bought a few months ago, is silver and my old car was black.

Still, after all this time, I look for a black car.

Once I walked up to one, the exact make and model of my previous vehicle, and tried to open it. I’m lucky I wasn’t arrested.

I suppose I could have claimed I didn’t intend to steal the car but was trying to move it to another parking space to prank the owner.

Even when I do find my car, I can seldom back out without having to wait for someone walking aimlessly behind me. I imagine he is looking for his car.

When he finds it, nine times out of 10 it will be parked next to mine and I will have to wait while he loads groceries into his car. This sometimes takes as long as it would take to grow the actual food.

It’s worse when I am trying to find a parking space and see someone who is about to pull out but doesn’t. He’ll sit there for an eternity while I sit in my car, blinker on, waiting impatiently to pull into a space that I won’t be able to find later on.

And that’s just the big stuff. Harder to find are the small things.

Let’s say you are in a store looking for a sympathy card. You find one that says:

Violets are blue,

Roses are red.

Sorry to hear

Your grandma is dead.

“Nah,” you say to yourself, because other customers want to get away from you, “this one won’t do.”

So you decide to put it back. But you can’t find the spot where you saw the card only 10 seconds before! Somehow, those very same cards have mysteriously moved or vanished into thin air.

Your eyes are not playing tricks on you. It is clearly a cosmic conspiracy.

It’s even worse at home. Whenever Sue asks me to get something, I’ll ask where it is. She will tell me it’s in a drawer, but when I look for the item, it’s never there.

The question is: Has Sue moved it or has the item — gleefully anticipating my dilemma — moved on its own?

Maybe it’s hiding under something I wasn’t looking for. Or it’s in the back of the drawer, which purposely won’t open all the way. Or it has jumped to the next drawer and is laughing at me.

This proves that inanimate objects are all in cahoots against me.

I don’t want to think I am going crazy. That happened a long time ago. So I figure I should see an eye doctor.

I hope I can find my car in the parking lot.

Copyright 2026 by Jerry Zezima

"The Juror Is Out"

By Jerry Zezima

If I am ever put on trial for committing crimes against journalism, a charge for which I am clearly guilty, I’d get off by pleading insanity. Besides, my lawyer is in jail.

Maybe that’s why I wasn’t selected when I was called — not once but twice — for jury duty.

When I spoke with the commissioner of jurors for an explanation, I found out he is the only such official in the state with — holy jurisprudence! — a Batphone.

“I’m like Commissioner Gordon in the old ‘Batman’ TV series,” John Nunziata, the commissioner of jurors in Suffolk County, New York, said as he pointed to the red telephone on a table in his office.

“Do you get calls from the Caped Crusader?” I asked.

“I can’t divulge that information,” the commissioner (Nunziata, not Gordon) said with a smile.

“Then maybe you can tell me why I wasn’t chosen to sit on a jury each time I was called,” I said. “I was insulted.”

“It’s nothing against you,” Nunziata assured me. “It’s a sheer math thing. There’s a jury pool of over 700,000 people. We can get 2,300 jurors a week. You were on standby. If you actually had to come in for a civil case, lawyers would select jurors. If they didn’t pick you, that really would have been a rejection.”

“I guess so,” I said. “But what about my second summons? That was for a grand jury.”

“You would have loved it,” Nunziata said. “It can last a month and there are secret proceedings. You can’t talk about it to anybody. A grand jury decides if a crime has been committed and if charges are brought.”

“Like on ‘Law & Order’ and all those other crime shows?” I wondered.

“I don’t watch them,” said Nunziata, adding that I was “duped into the system” after my first jury duty summons and wouldn’t have been eligible to serve on a grand jury.

“Can I file a peremptory challenge?” I asked.

“Only a lawyer can do that,” Nunziata explained.

“How about a voir dire?” I asked again.

“Same thing, except a judge can also reject a potential juror,” he explained again. “How do you know this stuff?”

“I’ve been admitted to many bars,” I said.

Nunziata knows his stuff, too. He has been in the court system for 36 years, starting as an officer and working his way up to sergeant before “getting out of the uniform” and becoming commissioner of jurors eight years ago.

“I love my job,” said Nunziata, who’s 65 and has no plans to retire.

He has seen pretty much everything.

“People will make up any excuse to get out of jury duty,” he said. “They’ll come in kicking and screaming. But once they’re selected, most of them find it to be a rewarding experience.”

Defendants are innocent until proven guilty, he said, but sometimes they don’t help their own cases.

“I heard of a guy who was arrested for stealing a Miami Dolphins jersey,” Nunziata remembered. “He wore it to court.”

“You can’t fix stupid,” I pointed out.

Then I asked the commissioner if he had ever been called for jury duty.

“Yes,” he said. “It was for federal jury duty. I went with my paperwork and was told to take a seat. When it was my turn, the judge said, ‘What do you do for a living?’ I said, ‘I’m the commissioner of jurors in Suffolk County.’ The judge said, ‘That’s enough.’ I said, ‘I’ve been trying to tell you for an hour.’ I was dismissed.”

“Were you disappointed?” I asked.

“No,” Nunziata admitted.

Even though I am not eligible to be called for jury duty for another six years, I could volunteer after two years.

“It’s a civic duty,” I said.

“What if you’re not selected again?” Nunziata asked.

“Holy voir dire!” I exclaimed. “I’ll call you on the Batphone.”

Copyright 2026 by Jerry Zezima

"You Go, Curls"

By Jerry Zezima

When it comes to the care of my hair, which is getting a little spare, I stick my tongue in a light socket to give it a certain flair.

That, without rhyme or reason, is what I told a phlebotomist who complimented me on what she called my “beautiful curls.”

Marlin said this as she was about to jab a needle in my arm, the mere sight of which should have made my hair stand on end.

“You have a head like my 2-year-old son,” she noted.

“On the inside or the outside?” I asked.

“The outside,” Marlin said with a smile.

“That’s good,” I replied, “because on the inside, he’s probably more mature than I am.”

The outside of her son’s head, his mother said, is covered with big, soft, round curls.

“Like yours,” said Marlin, possibly to take my mind off the needle.

I told her that my head used to look like her son’s.

“I had so much curly hair that it actually levitated. I couldn’t fit through doorways,” I said. “I don’t have as much hair as I used to and it’s shorter than when I was young.”

“Where do you get your hair cut?” Marlin asked.

“Home Depot,” I answered. “I go to the garden department to get my head weed whacked.”

“Are you serious?” she said.

“Seldom,” I said. “But I really go to a barber named Maria. She’s great.”

“I should take my son to her,” said Marlin, who has straight hair. “My husband should go to her, too, because he has curly hair. Our daughter, who’s 3, has straight hair.”

“I used to comb my hair to make it straight,” I remembered. “I should have used a rake. Eventually, I gave up and let it go natural.”

“You could have used a brush,” Marlin suggested.

“You mean a scrub brush?” I asked. “I would have ruined it. Besides, brushes are dangerous.”

“They are?” she responded.

“Absolutely,” I said. “Have you ever noticed that there are brush fires but not comb fires?”

“I never thought of that,” Marlin said.

“It’s my job to think of these things,” I said. “It happens in my head, under all the curls.”

By this time, Marlin had drawn enough blood to keep my brain from functioning.

“Thanks for not making this a hairy situation,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” Marlin replied. “Tell Maria she does a good job on your hair.”

Later that week, at my haircut appointment, I passed along the phlebotomist’s praises.

“That was very nice of her,” Maria said as she sprayed about a gallon of water on my thick thatch and began to trim away.

“I thought my hair was getting wiry in my old age,” I said.

“When curly hair turns gray, it can become wiry,” said Maria, who has dark curly hair. “Coloring loosens it up.”

“You used to have straight hair,” I said.

“Yes,” she replied. “When I was a kid, it was like I didn’t even have hair. It was so fine that my ears stuck out. When I was a young woman, it suddenly curled. That’s when I started straightening it. I used to wear it straight and long. Now it’s kind of long, but I can’t tame it. So I’ve given up.”

“Your curls are very nice,” I said.

“Thank you,” said Maria. “They’re easier to take care of.”

“That means you don’t have to straighten your hair anymore,” I said.

“Exactly,” she said. “Nobody likes their hair. People with curly hair want it straight and people with straight hair want it curly.”

“I’ll keep mine curly,” I said.

“OK,” Maria said as she finished up by putting a dab of conditioner in my hair. “So you’ll have more curls,” she explained. “They look good on you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “All these compliments are going straight to my head.”

Copyright 2026 by Jerry Zezima

"The Wheels on the Car"

By Jerry Zezima

Hey, boys and girls, and all of you adult drivers, here’s a song you can sing to the tune of the everlastingly popular but fantastically annoying kiddie ditty “The Wheels on the Bus”:

The wheel on the car goes thump, thump, thump

Thump, thump, thump

Thump, thump, thump

The wheel on the car goes thump, thump, thump

All through the town.

That’s what I was singing to myself, with a few other choice lyrics, when I drove my wife’s car, ever so slowly, to a nearby gas station to put air in the right front tire, which was flatter than my pathetic baritone.

Sue and I hadn’t been home for almost a week. Before we left on our trip in my car, the tire on her car was fine. In fact, all four tires were fine on her car, which was parked in the driveway.

When we got back, we noticed that the right front tire was low. The car itself agreed. On the dashboard was this electronic information: “Tire pressure low.”

It was at 21. The three other tires were at a normal 36.

I drove to the gas station and pumped enough air into the sagging tire to bring the pressure all the way up to 43. I’m surprised it didn’t explode in my face.

The next morning, it was down to 36. Later in the day, it had flatlined.

Back to the gas station I went. Back to flat went the tire.

So I got in Sue’s car and thumped my way up the street and around the corner to Dave Kunzler Tire of Port Jefferson Station, New York.

“My head is flat,” I told James, Dave’s friendly assistant manager. “So is the tire on my wife’s car.”

“Where is it?” James asked.

“On the right front side,” I answered.

“No, I mean, where is the car?” James asked again.

“Out front,” I answered again.

Sue had followed me in my car in case I had to leave hers at the shop.

“We’ll call you when it’s ready,” said Autumn, Dave’s equally friendly assistant manager.

Later that afternoon, James called to say two things:

1) Sue needed a new right front tire because insufficient air pressure in the old one had created a problem along the inside wall that couldn’t be repaired.

2) She also needed a new right rear tire because the old one had a bubble that could blow if she hit any of the 17 million potholes on area streets.

After picking up Sue’s car the next day and paying a very reasonable price for two new tires and excellent service, I sat down with Dave and found out that he is the third generation in the family business.

“My grandfather Bob started it in 1957,” Dave said. “He was a mountain of a man. And he was like the mayor. There wasn’t a place you could go and not know Bob — except church.”

Dave started working there when he was 13.

“Customers would say, ‘That kid’s gonna work on my car?’ I learned fast,” recalled Dave, adding that he’s a lot like his grandfather, who was outgoing. “My dad was quiet,” he said.

Dave, an Air Force veteran who was stationed in Germany in the late 1980s, returned to the family business in the early 1990s, then went to Atlanta to work for a big tire company before coming back home and buying the commercial end of the business from his father in 1997 at age 28.

“I’ve changed more tires than I can count,” said Dave. “I can change a tractor-trailer tire and stay clean.”

“If I tried to change a tire, I’d end up in the hospital,” I said.

“You don’t have to,” Dave noted. “Tell your wife that if she gets another flat, we’ll take care it.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Now the wheels on her car go round and round, all through the town.”

Copyright 2026 by Jerry Zezima