“If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.” -Erma Bombeck
“My children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced on television.” -Erma Bombeck
“We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies and the sand out of our belongings.” -Erma Bombeck, commenting on vacations
“Children make your life important.” -Erma Bombeck
“Graduation day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After twenty-two years of child-rearing, they are unemployed.” -Erma Bombeck
“Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.” -Erma Bombeck
“Laughter rises out of tragedy, when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.” -Erma Bombeck
“There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.” -Erma Bombeck
“For years it has done its job. It has led me not into temptation. It has reminded my husband numerous times at parties that it’s time to go home. It has been a source of relief to a dinner companion. It has been a status symbol in the maternity ward.” -Erma Bombeck, about her wedding ring
“Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen? Three. It takes one to say, ‘What light?’ and two more to say, ‘I didn’t turn it on.’” -Erma Bombeck
“I come from family where gravy is considered a beverage.” -Erma Bombeck
“Who, in their infinite wisdom, decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.” -Erma Bombeck
“A grandmother pretends she doesn’t know who you are on Halloween.” -Erma Bombeck
“I’ve been on a constant diet for the last two decades. I’ve lost a total of 789 pounds. By all accounts, I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.” -Erma Bombeck
“It seemed rather incongruous that in a society of super sophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.” -Erma Bombeck
“There is nothing more miserable in the world than to arrive in paradise and look like your passport photo.” -Erma Bombeck
“Car designers are just going to have to come up with an automobile that outlasts the payments.” -Erma Bombeck
“I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food.” -Erma Bombeck: as attributed in Bill Adler: “Funny Ladies: The Best Humor from America’s Funniest Women” (23 February 2001)
“My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.” -Erma Bombeck
“Christmas Shopping: Wouldn’t it be wonderful to find one gift that you didn’t have to dust, that had to be used right away, that was practical, fit everyone, was personal, and would be remembered for a long time? I penciled in ‘Gift certificate for a flu shot.’” -Erma Bombeck
“Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.” -Erma Bombeck
“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’” -Erma Bombeck: as attributed in Anne Wilson Schaef: “Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much” (1991)
“The age of your children is a key factor in how quickly you are served in a restaurant. We once had a waiter in Canada who said, ‘Could I get you your check?’ and we answered, ‘How about the menu first?’” -Erma Bombeck
“When humor goes, there goes civilization.” -Erma Bombeck
“The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.” -Erma Bombeck: “Family - The Ties that Bind . . . and Gag!” (31 October 1988)
“Sometimes I can’t figure designers out. It’s as if they flunked human anatomy.” -Erma Bombeck
“All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.” -Erma Bombeck
“How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?” -Erma Bombeck
“Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.” -Erma Bombeck
“Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It’s the only thing ‘real’ men do that doesn’t seem to threaten their masculinity. To women, it’s on the same domestic entry level as putting the spring back into the toilet-tissue holder or taking a chicken out of the freezer to thaw.” -Erma Bombeck
“Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.” -Erma Bombeck
“Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.” -Erma Bombeck: as quoted in “Time” (2 July 1984)
“Youngsters of the age of two and three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub.” -Erma Bombeck
“Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter-productivity.” -Erma Bombeck
“Kids have little computer bodies with disks that store information. They remember who had to do the dishes the last time you had spaghetti, who lost the knob off the TV set six years ago, who got punished for teasing the dog when he wasn’t teasing the dog, and who had to wear girl’s boots the last time it snowed.” -Erma Bombeck
“Most children’s first words are ‘Mama’ or ‘Daddy.’ Mine were, ‘Do I have to use my own money?’” -Erma Bombeck
“Mothers have to remember what food each child likes or dislikes, which one is allergic to penicillin and hamster fur, who gets carsick and who isn’t kidding when he stands outside the bathroom door and tells you what’s going to happen if he doesn’t get in right away. It’s tough. If they all have the same hair color they tend to run together.” -Erma Bombeck
“The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one.” -Erma Bombeck
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I see children as kites. You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you’re both breathless . . . they crash . . . you add a longer tail . . . they hit the rooftop . . . you pluck them out of the spout . . . you patch and comfort, adjust and teach. You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they’ll fly.
Finally, they are airborne, but they need more string and you keep letting it out and with each twist of the ball of twine, there is a sadness that goes with the joy because the kite becomes more distant and somehow you know that it won’t be long before that beautiful creature will snap the lifeline that bound you together and soar as it was meant to soar . . . free and alone.
Only then do you know that you did your job.
by Erma Bombeck: “At Wit’s End” (15 May 1977)
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“Why is it when you want a nice souvenir, you find a great shell in a gift shop, but some yo-yo has affixed a ten-cent thermometer to it?” -Erma Bombeck
“Everyone is guilty at one time or another of throwing out questions that beg to be ignored, but mothers seem to have a market on the supply. ‘Do you want a spanking or do you want to go to bed?’ ‘Don’t you want to save some of the pizza for your brother?’ ‘Wasn’t there any change?’” -Erma Bombeck
“Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.” -Erma Bombeck
“Mother’s words of wisdom: ‘Answer me! Don’t talk with food in your mouth!’” -Erma Bombeck
“Friends are annuals that need seasonal nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a perennial that comes up year after year, enduring the droughts of absence and neglect. There’s a place in the garden for both of them.” -Erma Bombeck
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l i v e ☆ l a u g h ツ l o v e ♥ g r o w ☼ l i v e ☆ l a u g h ツ l o v e ♥ g r o w ☼
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Great Accomplishments Depend on More Than Genetic Genius
- I was thinking about this the other morning when I turned on the light in my bathroom. Had a deaf man not invented it, I would be in darkness.
- I turned on the radio for my morning news fix and realized if a deformed hunchback had not had a major part in its development, I would be left in silence.
- I literally grew up under a president whose political record has never been matched, yet who could not walk or, indeed, move his legs.
- A high school dropout had invented the automobile I drove.
- Two brothers from Dayton, Ohio, who dropped out of high school, had developed the planes I traveled in.
- I thought of Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Hardy, and Joseph Conrad, who never had won a Nobel Prize for literature.
- I thought of Martin Luther, who had an I.Q. of 115, and Abraham Lincoln, who also was below ‘genius’ level.
by Erma Bombeck
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“What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?” -Erma Bombeck: “No One Diets on Thanksgiving”
“Marriage has no guarantees. If that’s what you’re looking for, go live with a car battery.” -Erma Bombeck
“Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.” -Erma Bombeck
“As a graduate of the Zsa Zsa Gabor School of Creative mathematics, I honestly do not know how old I am.” -Erma Bombeck
“Dreams have only one owner at a time. That is why dreamers are lonely.” -Erma Bombeck
“When mothers talk about the depression of the empty nest, they’re not mourning the passing of all those wet towels on the floor, or the music that numbs your teeth, or even the bottle of capless shampoo dribbling down the shower drain. They’re upset because they’ve gone from supervisor of a child’s life to a spectator. It’s like being the Vice President of the United States.” -Erma Bombeck
“I’ve exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.” -Erma Bombeck
“Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.” -Erma Bombeck
Erma Bombeck found the fun in everyday living . . . and made a livelihood out of it . . . how about you?
“I remember buying a set of black plastic dishes once, after I saw an ad on television where they actually put a blowtorch to them and they emerged unscathed. Exactly one week after I bought them, one of the kids brought a dinner plate to me with a large crack in it. When I asked what happened to it, he said it hit a tree. I don’t want to talk about it.” -Erma Bombeck
“It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.” -Erma Bombeck
“When your mother asks, “Do you want a piece of advice?” it is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.” -Erma Bombeck
Erma Louise Bombeck was born as Erma Louise Fiste on 21 February 1927 in Bellbrook, Ohio, United States of America. She became the beloved American humorist whose newspaper column, “At Wit’s End” grew to such popularity that it became nationally syndicated in 1965, and eventually became a regular feature in 800 different newspapers. From 1965 to 1996, she wrote more than 4,000 newspaper columns. Erma Louise Bombeck passed on at 69 years of age on 22 April 1996 in San Francisco, California, United States of America. Her 15 published books are available from your favorite booksellers.
“There’s a territorial ritual to an aerobics class. I entered a class for the first time a few years ago and ended up where no one wanted to be . . . in the front row next to the mirror. It was three years before I could work my way to the back row.” -Erma Bombeck
“When my kids are wild and unruly, I use a playpen. When they are finished, I climb out.” -Erma Bombeck: as quoted in Robert Kelly “In Celebration of Children” (1992), page 109
Thank you for joining us today on Make Fun Of Life! We are here to bring a little happiness to the world . . . and if you have broken your funny bone on the bumpy road of life, be sure to go to the top of this page where you will find a menu bar that includes Inspiration - give it a click and see if there is something you might like.
“My children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced on television.” -Erma Bombeck
“We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies and the sand out of our belongings.” -Erma Bombeck, commenting on vacations
“Children make your life important.” -Erma Bombeck
“Graduation day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After twenty-two years of child-rearing, they are unemployed.” -Erma Bombeck
“Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.” -Erma Bombeck
“Laughter rises out of tragedy, when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.” -Erma Bombeck
“There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.” -Erma Bombeck
“For years it has done its job. It has led me not into temptation. It has reminded my husband numerous times at parties that it’s time to go home. It has been a source of relief to a dinner companion. It has been a status symbol in the maternity ward.” -Erma Bombeck, about her wedding ring
“Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen? Three. It takes one to say, ‘What light?’ and two more to say, ‘I didn’t turn it on.’” -Erma Bombeck
“I come from family where gravy is considered a beverage.” -Erma Bombeck
“Who, in their infinite wisdom, decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.” -Erma Bombeck
“A grandmother pretends she doesn’t know who you are on Halloween.” -Erma Bombeck
“I’ve been on a constant diet for the last two decades. I’ve lost a total of 789 pounds. By all accounts, I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.” -Erma Bombeck
“It seemed rather incongruous that in a society of super sophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.” -Erma Bombeck
“There is nothing more miserable in the world than to arrive in paradise and look like your passport photo.” -Erma Bombeck
“Car designers are just going to have to come up with an automobile that outlasts the payments.” -Erma Bombeck
“I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food.” -Erma Bombeck: as attributed in Bill Adler: “Funny Ladies: The Best Humor from America’s Funniest Women” (23 February 2001)
“My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.” -Erma Bombeck
“Christmas Shopping: Wouldn’t it be wonderful to find one gift that you didn’t have to dust, that had to be used right away, that was practical, fit everyone, was personal, and would be remembered for a long time? I penciled in ‘Gift certificate for a flu shot.’” -Erma Bombeck
“Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.” -Erma Bombeck
“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’” -Erma Bombeck: as attributed in Anne Wilson Schaef: “Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much” (1991)
“The age of your children is a key factor in how quickly you are served in a restaurant. We once had a waiter in Canada who said, ‘Could I get you your check?’ and we answered, ‘How about the menu first?’” -Erma Bombeck
“When humor goes, there goes civilization.” -Erma Bombeck
“The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.” -Erma Bombeck: “Family - The Ties that Bind . . . and Gag!” (31 October 1988)
“Sometimes I can’t figure designers out. It’s as if they flunked human anatomy.” -Erma Bombeck
“All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.” -Erma Bombeck
“How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?” -Erma Bombeck
“Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.” -Erma Bombeck
“Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It’s the only thing ‘real’ men do that doesn’t seem to threaten their masculinity. To women, it’s on the same domestic entry level as putting the spring back into the toilet-tissue holder or taking a chicken out of the freezer to thaw.” -Erma Bombeck
“Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.” -Erma Bombeck
“Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.” -Erma Bombeck: as quoted in “Time” (2 July 1984)
“Youngsters of the age of two and three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub.” -Erma Bombeck
“Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter-productivity.” -Erma Bombeck
“Kids have little computer bodies with disks that store information. They remember who had to do the dishes the last time you had spaghetti, who lost the knob off the TV set six years ago, who got punished for teasing the dog when he wasn’t teasing the dog, and who had to wear girl’s boots the last time it snowed.” -Erma Bombeck
“Most children’s first words are ‘Mama’ or ‘Daddy.’ Mine were, ‘Do I have to use my own money?’” -Erma Bombeck
“Mothers have to remember what food each child likes or dislikes, which one is allergic to penicillin and hamster fur, who gets carsick and who isn’t kidding when he stands outside the bathroom door and tells you what’s going to happen if he doesn’t get in right away. It’s tough. If they all have the same hair color they tend to run together.” -Erma Bombeck
“The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one.” -Erma Bombeck
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l i v e ☆ l a u g h ツ l o v e ♥ g r o w ☼ l i v e ☆ l a u g h ツ l o v e ♥ g r o w ☼
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I see children as kites. You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you’re both breathless . . . they crash . . . you add a longer tail . . . they hit the rooftop . . . you pluck them out of the spout . . . you patch and comfort, adjust and teach. You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they’ll fly.
Finally, they are airborne, but they need more string and you keep letting it out and with each twist of the ball of twine, there is a sadness that goes with the joy because the kite becomes more distant and somehow you know that it won’t be long before that beautiful creature will snap the lifeline that bound you together and soar as it was meant to soar . . . free and alone.
Only then do you know that you did your job.
by Erma Bombeck: “At Wit’s End” (15 May 1977)
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l i v e ☆ l a u g h ツ l o v e ♥ g r o w ☼ l i v e ☆ l a u g h ツ l o v e ♥ g r o w ☼
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“Why is it when you want a nice souvenir, you find a great shell in a gift shop, but some yo-yo has affixed a ten-cent thermometer to it?” -Erma Bombeck
“Everyone is guilty at one time or another of throwing out questions that beg to be ignored, but mothers seem to have a market on the supply. ‘Do you want a spanking or do you want to go to bed?’ ‘Don’t you want to save some of the pizza for your brother?’ ‘Wasn’t there any change?’” -Erma Bombeck
“Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.” -Erma Bombeck
“Mother’s words of wisdom: ‘Answer me! Don’t talk with food in your mouth!’” -Erma Bombeck
“Friends are annuals that need seasonal nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a perennial that comes up year after year, enduring the droughts of absence and neglect. There’s a place in the garden for both of them.” -Erma Bombeck
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l i v e ☆ l a u g h ツ l o v e ♥ g r o w ☼ l i v e ☆ l a u g h ツ l o v e ♥ g r o w ☼
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Great Accomplishments Depend on More Than Genetic Genius
- I was thinking about this the other morning when I turned on the light in my bathroom. Had a deaf man not invented it, I would be in darkness.
- I turned on the radio for my morning news fix and realized if a deformed hunchback had not had a major part in its development, I would be left in silence.
- I literally grew up under a president whose political record has never been matched, yet who could not walk or, indeed, move his legs.
- A high school dropout had invented the automobile I drove.
- Two brothers from Dayton, Ohio, who dropped out of high school, had developed the planes I traveled in.
- I thought of Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Hardy, and Joseph Conrad, who never had won a Nobel Prize for literature.
- I thought of Martin Luther, who had an I.Q. of 115, and Abraham Lincoln, who also was below ‘genius’ level.
by Erma Bombeck
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l i v e ☆ l a u g h ツ l o v e ♥ g r o w ☼ l i v e ☆ l a u g h ツ l o v e ♥ g r o w ☼
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“What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?” -Erma Bombeck: “No One Diets on Thanksgiving”
“Marriage has no guarantees. If that’s what you’re looking for, go live with a car battery.” -Erma Bombeck
“Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.” -Erma Bombeck
“As a graduate of the Zsa Zsa Gabor School of Creative mathematics, I honestly do not know how old I am.” -Erma Bombeck
“Dreams have only one owner at a time. That is why dreamers are lonely.” -Erma Bombeck
“When mothers talk about the depression of the empty nest, they’re not mourning the passing of all those wet towels on the floor, or the music that numbs your teeth, or even the bottle of capless shampoo dribbling down the shower drain. They’re upset because they’ve gone from supervisor of a child’s life to a spectator. It’s like being the Vice President of the United States.” -Erma Bombeck
“I’ve exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.” -Erma Bombeck
“Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.” -Erma Bombeck
Erma Bombeck found the fun in everyday living . . . and made a livelihood out of it . . . how about you?
“I remember buying a set of black plastic dishes once, after I saw an ad on television where they actually put a blowtorch to them and they emerged unscathed. Exactly one week after I bought them, one of the kids brought a dinner plate to me with a large crack in it. When I asked what happened to it, he said it hit a tree. I don’t want to talk about it.” -Erma Bombeck
“It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.” -Erma Bombeck
“When your mother asks, “Do you want a piece of advice?” it is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.” -Erma Bombeck
Erma Louise Bombeck was born as Erma Louise Fiste on 21 February 1927 in Bellbrook, Ohio, United States of America. She became the beloved American humorist whose newspaper column, “At Wit’s End” grew to such popularity that it became nationally syndicated in 1965, and eventually became a regular feature in 800 different newspapers. From 1965 to 1996, she wrote more than 4,000 newspaper columns. Erma Louise Bombeck passed on at 69 years of age on 22 April 1996 in San Francisco, California, United States of America. Her 15 published books are available from your favorite booksellers.
“There’s a territorial ritual to an aerobics class. I entered a class for the first time a few years ago and ended up where no one wanted to be . . . in the front row next to the mirror. It was three years before I could work my way to the back row.” -Erma Bombeck
“When my kids are wild and unruly, I use a playpen. When they are finished, I climb out.” -Erma Bombeck: as quoted in Robert Kelly “In Celebration of Children” (1992), page 109
Thank you for joining us today on Make Fun Of Life! We are here to bring a little happiness to the world . . . and if you have broken your funny bone on the bumpy road of life, be sure to go to the top of this page where you will find a menu bar that includes Inspiration - give it a click and see if there is something you might like.