Moving day is getting closer, so this will probably be my last blog post until after I’m settled in the new house.
During my sorting and packing I’ve come across a few of my newspaper columns that I wrote for many years when my husband and I were raising our family. The kids were young and there were five of them running around the house creating all sorts of chaos, and not long after the twins were born, I’d figured out that I needed to do something to save my sanity.
Since I’ve always loved the books and newspaper columns written by Erma Bombeck, I decided to try my hand at sharing the foibles of parenting. Laughing is so much better for us than crying, so what could I lose?
I was lucky enough to take a couple of her long-distance classes – back when some authors would share their expertise via cassette tapes and written materials sent through the postal service that we, the students, could learn from at our own pace. That system was particularly good for me as my pace was pretty slow considering all the distractions. Still, I managed to learn a lot, and after careful writing and rewriting, I had a few sample columns to take to our local newspaper & pitch my idea to the editor.
He took pity on me, or perhaps himself, when I invaded his office with five little kids in tow. I couldn’t leave them in the van unsupervised, now could I?
Anyway he gave me the weekly gig, and even said the paper could pay $5.00 per column. Oh goody! Pocket money for all those luxuries in life like more disposable diapers for my twins who REFUSED to use the potty.
Erma Bombeck had quite a stellar career, and currently, there’s a workshop in comedy writing offered in her name at the University of Dayton. It would be great fun to go there one day!
Many of the columns that I wrote back then made their way into the humorous memoir A Dead Tomato Plant and a Paycheck, but the following one wasn’t included.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It’s always fascinating to watch small children as they assimilate the tidbits of general information they learn at school, while eating their afternoon snack.
An attentive mother can almost see the little wheels turning around in their minds, accepting, rejecting, sorting and filing, and then they’re ready to venture forth into the great adventure of sharing their new found tidbit.
For example, my first grader recently asked this question at the dinner table, “Did everyone already browse through the hot dogs?”
Conditions being what they normally are during dinner, lots of conversations creating a cacophony of sound, I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. “What did you say?”
“I want another hot dog.”
“No. I mean what exactly did you say?”
He was mad now because the hot dogs were all gone, so he just glared at me. “Did you say..? And I repeated his question word for word.”
“Uh – huh.”
“Do you know what it means to browse? “
Rolling his eyes and one of those “God give me patience expressions,” he replied, “Of course.”
He then went on to pantomime rifling through the pages of a book. That’s browsing, mom. Don’t you know?
It’s obvious that I forgot the part of this process – which is the further education of parents and how seriously all of my kids take the challenge. My second grader is particularly adept at this. When passing on some nugget of higher education, she has the approach of the stern faced schoolmaster complete with penetrating glances and trick questions.
“Did you know we once had a great big fight with the English?”
“Well yes. I knew that.”
“Did you know we won?”
“Um, yes I knew that too.”
“Do you know why we fought the English?”
“Of course. To be free.
“Aha! Also to have your birthday.”
“Wait a minute. It was just a coincidence that I was born on the 4th of July.”
“Oh you mean you weren’t there? At the war?”
When I pointed out the difficulty of me having been there, and I’m not sure if her disappointment was greater because she hadn’t tripped me up, or because she couldn’t take me to school for show-and-tell as the last person to have lived through the Revolutionary War.
That’s all from me for a while folks. Take care and as always be safe. Be happy.
If you liked this bit of humor, you’ll enjoy the anecdotes in the book, A Dead Tomato Plant & a Paycheck.