Talk:Erma Bombeck
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- A child develops individuality long before he develops taste. I have seen my kid straggle into the kitchen in the morning with the outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle.
- A friend doesn't go on a diet because you're fat.
- A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend; and he's a priest.
- All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with white carpet is one of them.
- Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead.
- Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you.
- Big deal! I'm used to dust.
- Erma Bombeck's requested epitaph
- Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?
- Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.
- Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You're not out of it until the computer says you're out of it.
- God created man, but I could do better.
- Graduation day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After twenty-two years of child-raising, they are unemployed.
- Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.
- Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter-productivity.
- Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.
- I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.
- I haven't trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I've never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex.
- I was too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security, and too tired for an affair.
- If a man watches three football games in a row he should be declared legally dead.
- I'm trying very hard to understand this generation. They have adjusted the timetable for childbearing so that menopause and teaching a sixteen-year-old how to drive a car will occur in the same week.
- It is fast approaching the point where I don't want to elect anyone stupid enough to want the job.
- It's nothing short of a miracle that for years women have worked together side by side in the kitchens of America. I would have been willing to bet in an atmosphere of blunt instruments and sharp cutlery, not one of them would have been left alive.
- I've exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.
- In two decades I've lost 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.
- Memory deficiency got so bad with me, I forgot to repeat a piece of gossip I swore on my Grandmother's Grave never to divulge.
- Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.
- My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.
- My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?
- Never accept a drink from a urologist.
- Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
- Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated.
- Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
- No self respecting mother would run out of intimidations on the eve of a major holiday.
- Oh, quit being such a Pollyanna.
- One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's name and how old he or she is.
- Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.
- People shop for a bathing suit with more care than they do a husband or wife. The rules are the same. Look for something you'll feel comfortable wearing. Allow for room to grow.
- Sexually active coat hangers are at their peak when they are in a small closet. We once lived in an apartment with a closet so small it couldn't support a rod… just two nails. Within a week (the shortest gestation in the history of coat hangers) we had thirty-seven of those little suckers.
- Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.
- Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.
- The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.
- There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.
- There's something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she's only measured water in it.
- What's with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?
- When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and says he's doing nothing, but the dog is barking, call 911.
- When humor goes, there goes civilization.
- 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".
- When you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home.
- 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.
- Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.
- Why would anyone steal a shopping cart? It's like stealing a two-year-old.
- You were our first miracle. You were the genesis of a marriage, the fulfillment of love, the promise of our infinity...You were the beginning
- Youngsters of the age of two or three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub.