Bombeck - Forever, Erma : best-loved writing from Americas favorite humorist

Foreword

Erma Bombeck published more than four thousand syndicated columns from 1965 until her death on April 22, 1996. From this extraordinary output of wit and compassion, the daunting task of selecting this collection fell to us. (We had both edited Erma's work.) Every person who knew what we were doing recognized the impossibility of the mission but could not forbear telling us, "Oh, you can't leave out...." Since virtually any of Erma's millions of readers, if solicited for an opinion, would also suggest a column that couldn't be omitted, we hope we've included at least a few of everyone's favorites.

Let us mention that we, at least, benefited from the expert guidance of Erma's longtime secretary, Norma Born who was able to provide us with a list of the most-requested columns and to some extent from the guidance of Erma herself. When Erma took a vacation she always picked a group of her favorite columns to be rerun in her absence. We are happy to say that Erma had a strong vote in our selection.

Sitting in Erma's living room, reading her columns and laughing out loud, listening to Norma and Erma's husband, Bill, reminiscing, we would often remark that Erma could have gotten a column (and a few laughs) out of our efforts.

We also discovered long-forgotten gems that gave us some insight into Erma's motivation for writing her column. Back on April 4, 1969, for instance, Erma published the following column:

A Mrs. "R.N." of Boston has raised a rather interesting question. "Mrs. Bombeck's column is devoted merely to the gripes of a suburban housewife. Her infantile self-absorption is annoying. Why doesn't she direct her writing toward a more constructive topic?"

I'm surely glad you brought up that little thing, Mrs. R.N. You see, on a newspaper, reporters have areas they cover called "beats." Some men cover politics, business, crime, medicine, government, radio and television, while women cover fashions, food, society.

I cover the utility room beat.

I used to cover obituaries, but it was a pretty thankless job. No one patted you on the back and said "Loved your lead" or sent you a Whitman's Sampler for spelling his name right. So when the utility room beat came up I grabbed it.

Oh, I had big plans. I was going to do columns on "A Mother Looks at Eric Sevareid," "Would a Bake Sale Help Russia with Her U.N. Dues?" "Racist Is a Six-Letter Word (unless it's plural, then it's seven)," "How Political Science Has Made Me a Woman." And I had a dandy line on a series that would blow the lid off a ring of primary teachers who were selling show-and-tell tapes as underground movies.

It never worked out, Mrs. R.N. Somewhere between my typewriter and the editor's office, my "constructive topics" underwent drastic surgery. "I want you to make housewives laugh," said the editor.

"I mean no disrespect, sir, but that's like making me photo editor of Reader's Digest."

"That's where the challenge comes in." He smiled. "Why, in a few years you'll rank right up there with those other famous humorists from Ohio, Robert A. Taft and the Wright Brothers."

I've been at the helm of "Mission Impossible" for four years now. It's a challenge. If I am consumed with my self-absorption, it is for a reason.

Long ago it became apparent there were only two people in the world I could take a crack at in print without being sued or severely criticized: Adolf Hitler and me!

Furthermore, I wouldn't trade my beat for anything else on the newspaper. Sometimes as I sift through the grim, the ugly, the shocking, I recoil here between the hot water heater and the detergent and I get my perspective.

Screaming kids, unpaid bills, green leftovers, husbands behind newspapers, basketballs in the bathroom. They're real... they're warm... they're the only bit of normalcy left in this cockeyed world, and I'm going to cling to it like life itself.

On the occasion of her twenty-fifth anniversary of writing the column, in April 1990, Erma interviewed herself. To the question, "What do you hope your column has accomplished?" she responded:

I like to imagine that after a person has read our waters are polluted, the world is in flames, streets are crime-ridden, drugs are rampant and her horoscope predicts her sign just collided with something that will reduce her to poverty, she'll read how the dryer returns only one sock to me from every two I put in and I tell my kids, "The other one went to live with Jesus," and maybe smile.

The most gratifying comment on her career, however, came at the end of a column written on March 10, 1987:

I always had a dream that when I am asked to give an accounting of my life to a higher court, it will go like this: "So, empty your pockets. What have you got left of your life? Any dreams that were unfulfilled? Any unused talent that we gave you when you were born that you still have left? Any unsaid compliments or bits of love that you haven't spread around?"

And I will answer, "I've nothing to return. I spent everything you gave me. I'm as naked as the day I was born."

Who could have spent it better?

Donna Martin Alan McDermott

My deeds will be measured

not by my youthful appearance,

but by the concern lines on my forehead,

the laugh lines around my mouth,

and the chins from seeing

what can be done for those smaller

than me or who have fallen.

April 17, 1996

(from Erma Bombeck's last column)

Hello, Young Mothers

Paint Tint Caper September 4, 1965

Once... just once... I'd like to be dressed for an emergency.

I don't mean like my grandmother used to warn: "That is not underwear to be hit by a car in." I mean just to be glued together, so you're not standing in a hospital hallway in a sweatshirt (PROPERTY OF NOTRE DAME ATHLETIC DEPT.) and a pair of bedroom slippers.

In a way, it's almost as if fate were waging a cruel war and you're in the middle of it. Not only are you (a) bleeding to death, (b) grimacing in pain, and (c) worried half out of your skull, you are also plagued with the fear that the nurses in East Wing C are passing the hat to adopt you and your family for Thanksgiving.

Take our Paint Tint Caper, for example. Our small son climbed into bed with us early one morning and smiled broadly. I'm intuitive. I'm a mother. I sensed something was wrong. His teeth were blue. He had bitten into a tube of paint tint. Now if you're visualizing some sweet, tousled-hair boy in his fire-engine pajamas, forget it. This kid looked like he was being raised by werewolves!

In addition to his blue teeth, he was wearing a pair of training pants and his father's old T-shirt, which caught him loosely around the ankles. This was obviously no time to be proud or to explain that I was a few years behind in the laundry. We rode like the wind to the emergency ward of the hospital, where the doctor checked over his blue teeth so calmly I thought there was something wrong with mine because they were white.

"What kind of paint tint?" he asked clinically.

"Sky blue," we said shakily, pointing to the color on his T-shirt.

"I can see that," he said irritably. "I mean, what did it contain chemically?"

My husband and I stared at each other. Normally, you understand, we don't let a can of paint into the house until we've committed the chemical contents and their percentages to memory. This one had escaped us somehow.

While they were pumping his stomach, we took a good look at ourselves. My husband was in a pair of thrown-over-the-chair denims and his pajama top. I was wearing yesterday's house dress with no belt, no hose, and a scarf around my uncombed hair. I was clutching a dish towel, my only accessory. We looked like a family of Okies who had just stepped into the corridor long enough to get a tin can of water for our boiling radiator.