Lynn, Catherine

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Tiffany, a worshipper of Elvis, especially treasured every account of The King standing in line at Wal-Mart or window shopping along Rodeo Drive or peeking through his front door screen. It was proof to her that he was alive and well and looked as handsome and slender (at least in the fuzzy, touched-up, 300 times enlarged photos that accompanied each article) as when he first appeared on the Ed Sullivan show.Humans with extra body parts were also among her favorite subjects —  especially people with more than one head.Not real Siamese twins —  that was a boring medical reality done to death on the Sally Jesse Raphael show —  but individuals with only one body and two or more heads.Or better yet, one head and two or more bodies, although that was distinctly more rare. She even believed the story about the farmer's wife who gave birth to a litter of pigs.Now it's the Kennedys —  raping innocent young women and running around their Palm Beach compound drunken and disorderly, dressed in nothing but t-shirts and ankle socks. This was the last straw for Sally, a staunch Democrat and ardent Kennedy fan. Now she refuses to talk to Tiffany, for fear of giving her the slightest encouragement. Says Sally, grateful to be among the more enlightened reading public, "I never believe ANYthing unless I see it in People magazine."TO REACH THE COMMON FOLKIf I live to be 100 (and I will), my children have promised to mail my photograph to Willard Scott, the jolly, people-person weatherman on NBC.When my picture appears on the screen Willard will gleefully announce:"Now, here is CATHERINE LYNN of Long Beach, California —  100 years young and isn't she a pretty lady!"But no one will see a shriveled crone,package birthday bow in her carefully permed hair,dressed in something ill-fitting that hergrandchildren picked out for her,stooped and confused and trying to smileas her bleery, watery eyesare blinded by the camera flash.I will be sitting ramrod straight in my favorite antique chair,26wearing my flowing lavender hippie dress and dangling purple shell-shaped earrings.My hair will be naturally gray, shoulder-length and wild, the way I like it.I will be bright-eyed and alert, smiling broadly in spite of my worn-down coffee-stained teeth and my Map of Europe face.Greenpeace, Save the Whale, Ban the Bomb,and Vote Democrat buttonswill be pinned to my lapeland I will be holding alofta copy of my best-selling,Pulitzer-Prize-winning collectionof straight-forward, easy-to-understand poetrythat every literary critic in the free worldhas proclaimed to be the turning pointin making poetry readingas popular among the massesas afternoon soapsand MTV.NATURAL SELECTIONIt happens every Spring —adult birds build their nestsin the branches of the giant juniper treesoutside my bedroom window.The trees are heavy-branched and hanging —  unmoored to the house in any way.They sway and thrash about with every gust of wind.From April to June we find tiny nestlings scattered across the yard like a field of soft brown dandelions —  shivering, not yet ready to fly, stunned from their fall,as the parent birds circle frantically above, unable to help.We used to carry them into the warmth of the kitchen, wrap them in towels, and force-feed them warm milk with medicine droppers.But they always died,and the children would weepand make graves for themwith markers of crossed sticksand mounds of garden wildflowers.27

To Reach the Common Folk

https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/wormwood/wormwood_a1992v32n1i125/wormwood_a1992v32n1i125p26.pdf

To Reach the Common Folk

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