"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

"Writer on the Storm Door"

By Jerry Zezima

If there was one thing I had in common with our old storm door, aside from the fact that we both let in hot air, it’s that we were becoming unhinged. One of us had to go, so I showed the door the door.

It gave me an opening to avoid serious injury should the door fall on my head, in which case the glass would be shattered and the frame bent but my head would still be intact.

My wife, Sue, agreed, not just about my head but the storm door, which she used every day, often several times, to go to the gym, to the grocery store, to the mailbox or to escape the silly remarks that constantly pour from my head, whether a door falls on it or not.

“It’s about 15 years old,” she told me.

“My head is a lot older than that,” I replied. “You must be referring to my maturity level.”

“And,” Sue added, rolling the eyes in her own head and ignoring yet another silly remark, “the warranty is probably up. We need a new storm door.”

We went to a home improvement store and ordered a door that was exactly like the one that needed to be replaced.

A couple of weeks later, we met Chris Riehm, an independent contractor who had come over to take down the old storm door and install the new one.

We ended up talking, naturally, about lizards.

“On one job, I had removed the door but hadn’t yet put in the new one and a lizard got in the house,” remembered Chris, who said he likes the scaly creatures and knows a lot about them.

“You could be a herpetologist,” I said, referring to a scientist who studies reptiles and amphibians.

“There was a reptile museum in North Carolina that I loved,” Chris said. “I went back with my kids, but it had closed because the owner shot and killed her husband.”

“Did she say, ‘See you later, alligator’?” I wondered. “Or, ‘In a while, crocodile’? She also could have killed him with a boa and arrow.”

“Stop!” hissed Sue, who hates lizards only slightly less than my silly remarks.

That left the door open for Chris to use the closer to keep the door open (so why isn’t it called the opener?) while he removed the fixtures.

“My storm door doesn’t even have a closer,” said Chris, adding that he and his wife have five young kids who “go in and out all day long.”

“Sue used to lock herself out all the time,” I said. “One time our daughter locked herself out and called me to come home and let her in. I said to her, ‘You remembered your phone but not the key?’ She said, ‘What’s more important?’ ”

“It didn’t matter,” Sue said. “She went around back and climbed in through the kitchen window.”

“The kitchen has French doors that don’t open,” I said. “I don’t know why we have them. We can’t speak French, although our daughter’s husband can because he’s from France.”

Chris took the old storm door out and put in the new one, which came with shiny brass fixtures that Sue picked out.

“Do you want me to put the screen in?” he asked.

“No, thanks. Just leave the glass,” Sue replied. “I wanted a door with full glass because I don’t like the ones with metal on the bottom.”

“In that case,” I told Chris, “the door would be half-glassed.”

“It comes with keys, one for each of you,” he said. “Put them with your keys to the front door so you won’t get locked out.”

“The new storm door looks beautiful,” Sue told Chris. “You did a great job.”

“And,” I added, “you didn’t let a lizard in the house.”

Copyright 2026 by Jerry Zezima

"It's in the Cards"

By Jerry Zezima

I am not a good enough athlete to have my own baseball card, and I am not animated enough to have my own Pokemon card, but I am a man of culture, which I get from yogurt, so I could have my own trading card.

That was the estimation of a friendly and knowledgeable guy named Daniel, who works at the card store where I went with one of my sons-in-law and his two sons, aka my grandsons, who love to collect and trade cards, mostly Pokemon, sometimes baseball but not yet one featuring the goofy mug of their maternal grandfather, aka yours truly.

“Could I have my own trading card?” I asked Daniel, who looked at me quizzically.

“That depends on how much space in the culture you have,” he replied.

“I have a lot of space between my ears,” I told him.

“Are you a baseball player?” Daniel inquired.

“I was in Little League,” I said.

“When was that?” he asked.

“Right after baseball was invented,” I said. “But my two daughters had their own cards when they played softball. I was the team manager. We were terrible, but not because of them.”

I went on to tell Daniel that my older daughter is the mother of my grandsons, who are 9 and 7.

“The older one plays organized baseball,” I said. “He’s a slugger, so maybe he can have his own card.”

“What do you do?” Daniel wanted to know.

“As little as possible,” I said. “But when I absolutely have to do something, I’m a writer.”

“What do you write?” he asked.

“Stuff that has no redeeming social value,” I replied. “I’m a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist and an author.”

“Some writers and artists have their own cards,” Daniel said. “But they’re not worth as much as baseball and Pokemon cards.”

“What’s your most expensive card?” I wondered.

Daniel pointed to a glittery one in a glass case.

“It’s Mega Greninja ex, a Pokemon card,” he said. “It sells for $1,600.”

“That’s a little above my price range,” I said, adding that I planned to buy both of my grandsons a pack of Pokemon cards. Cost: $9 each.

I also told Daniel that my younger daughter’s husband, who had given me and my wife a bunch of baseball cards to bring to the boys on our visit, is a physicist who has two cards of his own.

He got them for solving the Ginter Code, an interactive puzzle hidden in Topps baseball card sets. He solved it the first time with two other guys and the second time by himself.

“He’s a really smart guy,” I told Daniel.

So, I added, is my other son-in-law, the father of the boys. He’s a journalist whose parents didn’t throw out the baseball cards he had as a kid.

“They actually brought them to me on their last visit,” he said.

“The baseball cards I had as a kid got thrown out,” I said. “I had a lot of guys who are now dead. I could have been a millionaire.”

My grandsons thanked me for buying Pokemon cards for them. The older one regaled me with stories of his skillful trades with friends.

“I know what I’m doing,” he said. “I get really good deals.”

I was impressed that both boys have their cards — Pokemon and baseball — neatly organized in binders.

“I like players on the Red Sox and Nationals,” the younger one told me. “And there’s one guy on San Diego I like.”

“Do you guys think I could have my own card?” I asked.

“For what?” the older one wondered.

“Being a writer,” I said.

“Is that because you can’t play baseball?” the younger one said.

“It’s because I’m not a Pokemon character,” I answered.

“Sorry, Poppie,” the older boy said, “but I don’t think you’d be a good trade.”

Copyright 2026 by Jerry Zezima