E  S  S  A  Y   I killed a scorpion in the bathroom today. How many people you know can say that? And don’t give me that “living thing” rebuke. Did you want me to put this stone cold killer in the scorpion relocation program?

Okay, they don’t often kill you. I’m exaggerating as usual. But within a few hours of being stung by a scorpion you can experience pain and swelling, difficulty swallowing, drooling, muscle twitching, respiratory problems and sometimes death. Does that sound like fun?

This was an Arizona bark scorpion and they, like most scorpions, prefer to hang out in dark and damp places. Hence, it’s no surprise I found one in the bathroom. People here advise one to shake out their shoes and damp towels before using. One advisory notes that scorpions can climb any surface except glass and plastic, which comes as little comfort since houses are made mostly of wood, plaster and tile. They have some impressive survival skills due to their ability to slow their metabolism. It allows them to use little oxygen and live off as little as a single insect per year. You can freeze them overnight and put them out in the sun the next day only to watch them thaw out and walk away. We’re talking hardy.

The stinger is in the tail but I didn’t feel the need to get up close and personal with this cousin of the spider family. Experts suggest you hunt for them at night when they are most active. Dig out your old black light if you have one because they glow in the dark. A flashlight with a black light bulb will work just fine. They also suggest you have a long-handled tweezers or a knife and boots. They don’t say it but I think the implication is that if you don’t want to tweeze them you could alternatively give them the boot. You can also use Raid ant and cockroach spray which has the fastest activation. It’s a good idea to check the perimeter of the house at night with black light in hand to see if you can find them before they get inside.

Cats and chickens enjoy hunting scorpions so if they are persistent, it may be time to get a cat or keep chickens in the yard. Ground cinnamon is a natural scorpion repellent but it can get pricey sprinkling that spice all around the baseboards.

My defense plan? I’ve only seen 2 scorpions in the house in 8 years so I’m going to do nothing unless a third one shows up.

However, I will shake out my shoes more often.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle.

I lost a sock. It was one of my favorites and I did the usual search in and around the dryer with no success. I saved the mate because I loved this pair so much and I felt confident that it would turn up, as lost socks usually do, stuck to a towel or a pair of underpants or some such item.

This happened about eight years ago. Until yesterday the missing sock had never surfaced. I’d kept its mate all this time, stuffed into a corner of my sock drawer. I’d look at it every once in a while and wonder what its more adventurous partner was up to. I’d touch it sometimes and remember how cozy the two of them felt on my feet. But I was resigned to never seeing them together again, unless maybe when I moved and all the furniture left the house. Or if I bought a new washer and dryer and found the sock under the old machines as they were carried out of the house to make room for new ones.

And then yesterday morning I walked into my kitchen and there was the sock, right in the middle of the floor, looking exactly as it did the day it went missing. Okay, so had I been stepping over this sock for eight years and not noticing it? No way. I would stake my life I hadn’t even stepped over it the night before. I should point out that I live alone in my home. No other humans, no pets. My first thought was that there must be an animal in the house. Probably a mouse. It found the sock and was moving it to a convenient place to tear it apart and use the strands to feather its nest. Something made it drop the sock and run, maybe my approaching footsteps.

Did I say that was my first thought? Actually, it was my only thought. What else could it be? So I reintroduced the sock to it’s long estranged partner and dropped them both in the laundry so they could be washed together and continue to look alike. I set a trap for the mouse. Next morning: no mouse in the trap, an outcome met with relief and dismay. Still, I tried again the next night, with even more food in the trap. Nothing. So do I have a roommate I haven’t vetted? And here’s another thought – what if I do the laundry with the newly reunited pair in it, and only one of the socks appears in the basket after I empty the dryer?

Norma Libman is a journalist and lecturer who has been collecting women’s stories for more than twenty years. You can read the first chapter of her award-winning book, Lonely River Village, at NormaLibman.com.

Billy Donahue was a Florida native, five-foot-two, 130-pound former jockey. Billy had traveled all over the U.S. on the horse racing circuit. His only family was a brother from out of state, who wrote often and sent him spending money. Billy mostly stayed in his room watching TV, but he enjoyed talking to me about his career as a jockey and was particularly pleased to learn that I used to visit the Ak-Sar-Ben track in Omaha .

He was a low-talker , real quiet, and so I would always have to lean in close to hear what he was saying . The closer I leaned in to hear him, the farther back he would lean until he started to fall, and I would have to rush around behind him to make sure he didn’t fall to the ground .

I remember Petersen as loud, grumpy, in his late 70’s, still proudly wearing a chip of the financial industry on his slumping shoulders . He would park his wheelchair at the entrance to the dining hall where ladies became victims to shouts of “BITCH” as they neared the door. Petersen was served in his room whenever a prospective resident or family member came on a tour at meal time.

Mr. Smiley we called “Sarge.” He served with the U.S. Army in Korea right out of high school and again in Vietnam . My military experience created some common ground for the two of us. He was very personable ; always smiling; in good physical shape.

One afternoon we heard a pounding on the office door and a voice shouting, “Man down. Man down. Ass in a bucket.” I opened the door to find a very excited Mr. Smiley repeating his man-down refrain several times and gesturing for me to follow him. We hurried through the courtyard and along one of the residence hallways where I discovered Petersen , our resident “curser,” with his butt wedged into a large mop bucket.

A staff member driving home after work noticed Mr. Smiley walking beside the road some distance away from our assistant living facility . Like all of our residents, he was restricted to our property . Smiley was AWOL , heading to the separate facility where his wife resided. They had been married fifty-five years, and he missed her, even though , according to his daughter, they could not get along well enough to share the same space for an extended period of time.

Jack Ferrell is a retired farmhand, janitor, factory worker, intelligence officer, college professor, corporate officer and innkeeper, who has witnessed more events and heard more stories than he can begin to recall.

E  S  S  A  Y   The day before Easter, I set about making my mother’s traditional Easter cake. The recipe calls for self-rising flour instead of regular flour. I discovered I didn’t have enough self-rising flour, so I asked my husband to run to the store to buy more.

“What?” he asks, “I’ve never heard of self-rising flour! Can’t you just add something to regular flour to make the cake rise?”

“Look,”  I say, “It’s my mother’s traditional Easter recipe, and I’m not going to fiddle with it. Here’s what the self-rising flour box looks like. It won’t be that hard.”

If there is one thing that makes a makes a man nervous, it’s being asked to go to the store to buy something he knows nothing about. He would rather be given a bow and arrow with a request to shoot a wild pig because he would have a better chance of bringing home the right thing.

Jim is a seasoned hunter, though. He knows what to do. He folds up the flour box and shoves it into his pocket to make sure he gets an exact match.

After Jim leaves, l realize I have only one egg. The recipe calls for 2 large eggs. No problem, I send him a text: “I need large eggs.” He responds “OK”.

He walks in the door and hands me the bag. “Well, here’s what you asked for.” He hopes that if he states this firmly enough, he can avert any criticism of his efforts. Self-rising flour…check. Large eggs….wait, these are JUMBO eggs. I said I needed large eggs, not jumbo.

“But,” he pleads, “Those eggs are large! They are the largest they had!”

I get it. His male instinct has kicked in. The bigger the better. If I had asked for a large wild pig, and he then brought home a boar the size of Texas, the village would eat for days. He would be a hero. However, times have changed. These eggs are so big, they look as if they would hurt the chicken coming out. They will definitely throw off my mother’s traditional Easter cake recipe.

“I’m sorry”, I tell him, “but I need you to take these eggs back and buy smaller ones.”

“Well, ok.”

He is gone for a long time. Finally he calls. “I’ve been to three stores and none of them has small eggs.” As proof, he texts me a picture of each size carton. “What do you want me to do?”

I tell him to buy the carton marked “Large.”

He explodes. “Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place!”

I say, “I don’t know, honey. I guess I should have…and Mom called to say she is bringing the cake. Might as well shoot a wild pig on the way home.  We can always use the bacon.”

Kathy Brennan has organized information for a living as an educator, computer programmer and government policy writer. Now she is doing it for fun as a stand up comic and humorous writer. See more at http://mrskathybrennan.com/.

E  S  S  A  Y   Can you really label an entire generation a bunch of sociopaths? You can if you write a book with the title A Generation of Sociopaths, but that doesn’t make it so.

Antisocial, lacking empathy, impulsive, egotistical, shameless, manipulative, deceitful….are these words that describe you or your fellow boomers? Maybe a few words match up with a few friends or acquaintances, but an entire generation? I don’t think so.

The author cites the usual suspects for his claim. Permissive parenting, too much television and prosperous times made us who we are. Massive debt, unemployment and environmental degradation are all down to us. Somehow, one generation (albeit a big one) has been able to ruin the world for everyone. The author won’t even give baby boomers credit for doing anything worthwhile. No credit for equal rights or anti-war movements, no pat on the back for efforts to promote clean water and protect the environment. We just greedily looked out for our own wellbeing and to hell with everyone else. All for one and all for one.

Slandering an entire generation with massively scaled generalizations seems so unfair, but when you’re part of what was then the largest generation ever, you come to expect that there’s a target on your back. Honestly, don’t you think our influence on everything from culture to politics is a little overrated? Every generation is responsible for a variety of trends but bell bottom pants and platform shoes did not really change the world.

Isn’t there a little bit of irony to the fact that the millennial author of the book is a venture capitalist. He was an early investor in Pay Pal and Facebook and that qualifies him to generalize about our lack of empathy? I’m thinking that banking on the internet to produce the next big thing to make a pile of money has a sociopathic ring to it.

Too bad we won’t be around in 40 years or so when someone writes a book titled “Millennials: The Next Generation of Sociopaths.”

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle.