If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? (2 page)

“I just happen to believe there is no virtue in being early. What time is it?”

"It's eight o'clock. You're supposed to be at work at eight."

"Yes, lucky, I've got twenty minutes to spare."

Never in my life will I hear the "Star Spangled Banner" being played. I've also had to adjust to a man who does not know how to live in a world geared to leisure.

It's a common problem. A lot of women are married to workoholics and the trick is to get them to take two weeks off a year and just relax. Sounds simple?

I took my husband to the beach for two weeks where he promptly spread out a large beach towel, opened his briefcase and began to balance the checkbook.

I took him to a fancy hotel in a big city where he spent the entire week tinkering with the TV set trying to get the snow out of the picture.

Once I even took him to a nightclub where scantily clad girls danced out of key. After one came over and propped herself ceremoniously on his knee and tickled his chin, he turned to me and said, “We really should have the fire insurance on our house updated.”

A friend of mine suggested I take him camping. “There is nothing like the wilderness to make a man relax and bring him back to nature.” What did she know?

After three days in the wilderness, he had rotated the tires, mended three water mattresses, built a bridge, filled eight snow-control barrels with cinders and devised a sophisticated system to de-sand everyone before they entered the tent.

He went to the library to check on how the river got its name, wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper, read the lantern warranty out loud to all of us, organized a ball team and waxed the tent.

He alphabetized my staple goods, painted the word GAS on the gas cans, and hung our meat from a tree to make it inaccessible to bears and humans. (Raccoons eventually ate it.)

After that experience, I told him, “Face it, Bunkie, we are incompatible.”

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“I'm a fun-loving, irrepressible, impetuous Zeida, and you are a proper, restrained, put-your-underwear-on-a-hanger Dr. Zhivago.”

“I have a good time,” he said soberly.

“Do you know I'm the only woman in the world to wake up on New Year's Day with nothing to regret from the night before? No gold wedgies scattered on the stairway, no party hats on the back of the commode, no taste in my mouth like a wet chenille tongue? Only the memories of Father Time dozing over a warm Gatorade. I have had more stimulating evenings picking out Tupperware.”

“That not true,” he said. “What did we do last New Year's Eve?”

"From seven to eight-thirty I picked bubble gum out of the dog's whiskers. At ten-thirty you fell asleep in the chair while I drank unflavored gelatin to strengthen my fingernails. At ten-forty-five I went to the refrigerator for a drink. The kids had drunk all the mix and the neighbors had cleaned us out of the ice cubes. I poured two glasses of warm Gatorade, returned to the living room and kicked you in the foot. You jerked awake and said, 'Did you know that at midnight all horses age one year?'

"At eleven-forty-five your snooze alarm went off. You clicked your fingers while Carmen Lombardo sang 'Boo Hoo,' flipped the porch light on and off twice and shouted, 'Happy New Year.'

“I wish we could be like Dan and Wanda.”

“What's so great about Dan and Wanda?” he asked.

“Wanda tells me she and Dan have meaningful conversations.”

“Big deal,” he yawned.

“It is a big deal. Have we ever had one?”

“I don't think so,” he said.

Finally I said, “What is a meaningful conversation?”

“You're kidding! You actually don't know?”

“No, what is it?”

“Well, it's a conversation with meaning.”

“Like an oil embargo or Paul Harvey?”

“Exactly.”

“What about them?”

“What about who?”

“The oil embargo and Paul Harvey.”

“It doesn't have to be a conversation about the oil embargo and Paul Harvey,” he explained patiently. “It could be a discussion on anything in your daily schedule that is pertinent.”

“I shaved my legs yesterday.”

“That is not pertinent to anyone but you.”

“Not really. I was using your razor.”

“If you read the paper more, your conversation would be more stimulating.”

“Okay, here's something meaningful. I read just yesterday that in Naples... that's in Italy... police were searching for a woman who tried to cut off a man's nose with a pair of scissors while he was sleeping. What do you think of that?”

“That's not meaningful.”

A few minutes later I said, “Suppose it was the American Embassy and the woman was a spy and the nose, which held secret documents about an oil embargo between Saudi Arabia and Paul Harvey, belonged to President Carter?”

“Why don't we just go back to meaningless drivel?” he said.

“Which reminds me,” I said. “Did you read that article in the magazine where it said married people are unable to respond to their differences and that is why they become frustrated? It's called the old I-don't-care, it's-up-to-you or I-will-if-you-want-to blues. You do that a lot, and I never know how you stand on things.”

“I didn't read the article,” he said.

"Well, as I recall, it suggested that a husband and wife spell out their feelings using a scale of one to ten. For example, if you say, 'Would you like to go to a movie?' instead of shrugging my shoulders and saying, 'Makes no difference,' I respond by saying, 'I'm five on attending a movie. Actually I'm eight on seeing the picture, but I'm three on spending the money right now.'

“That makes sense.”

“Let's try it. What would you like for dinner?”

“Farah Fawcett Majors.”

“Not 'who,' Clown, 'what'!”

“How will I know until I know what we're having?”

“That's the point. Offer some suggestions.”

“Okay, liver is a big ten with me.”

“I hate liver. To me liver is a minus two and you know it. How about meat loaf?”

“Meat loaf with meat is a six, without meat but with a lot of bread, a two. However, if you feel nineish about it, I'll send one of the kids to the Golden Arches, which is emerging as a big ten.”

“Would it hurt you to be a nine about meat loaf just once?” I snapped.

“You should talk. In twenty-seven years, you haven't gotten off your two once when I have discussed having liver.”

“Lower your voice! We don't have to air our two's and three's to the neighbors. How about an omelet?”

“That sounds like a firm eight to me.”

“Good. We agree. We're out of eggs, so you'll have to go to the store.”

“The car is a nine. I'm having battery trouble. That averages out omelets to a four.”

“Okay, we're down to peanut butter. It's a definite three, minus one for being cold. However, it's a plus two for nutrition plus four for not being a leftover and a minus three for being fattening. That comes out to a five. Whatdaya think?”

“I don't care,” said my husband.

“I was hoping you'd say that.”

There's a lot of talk about why marriages are failing, but how come so many succeed?

Some women are too old for a paper route, too young for social security, too clumsy to steal and too tired for an affair. Some were just born into this world married and don't know how to act any different.

For the woman who has any doubts about her status, just answer a few simple questions.

When your husband's best friend leans closer on the dance floor and whispers in your ear, “What are you doing the rest of my life?” and you whisper back, “Waiting for my washer repairman,” you're married.

When a tall, dark, handsome stranger takes your hand and asks you to dance and you answer, “I can't. My pantyhose just shifted and with the slightest movement they'll bind my knees together,” you're married.

When a Robert Redford look-alike invites you to have a cup of coffee after your evening class and you order a hamburger with onions, you're married.

When you are invited by the office single dude to join him for a weekend and bring a friend and you bring your husband... you're married.

When a party reveler asks, “Have you ever thought of leaving your husband” and you answer, “Where?” you're married.

No one talks about fidelity anymore, it's just something you hope is still around... and in significant numbers. And when the Coast Guard band strikes up “Semper Fidelis” and your husband says, “They're playing our song. You wanta dance?” you know you're married.

2

The Mother Mystique

An eleven-year-old girl once wrote:

Mrs. Bombeck,

I do not understand Mothers.

How come my Mom can hit anyone anywhere in the house at any distance with a shoe?

How can she tell without turning her head in the car that I am making faces at my brother in the back seat?

How can she be watching television in the living room and know that I am sneaking cookies in the kitchen?

Some of my friends also don't understand Moms. They want to know how she can tell just by looking at them that they had a hot dog and three Cokes before they came home from school for dinner. Or where they are going to lose the sweater they hate.

We think it is spooky the way the phone rings and before we even pick it up she says, “Five minutes!”

We all agree no one in the world has super vision, super hearing, or can smell quite like a Mother. One guy said he had a piece of bubble gum once wrapped in foil in his shoe and his Mom said, “Let's have the gum. You want to tear your retainer out?”

Since you write about kids all the time we thought you could explain Moms to us.

Sincerely, Cathie

Dear Cathie and Friends:

I found your letter most amusing. You make Motherhood sound like Jeane Dixon on a good day. (Sit up dear, and don't hold this book so close to your face. You'll ruin your eyes.)

Actually, there is no mystique at all to being a Mother. We all started out as normal, average little children like yourself, who grew up and developed the usual x-ray vision, two eyes in the back of our head, bionic hearing and olfactory senses that are sharpened by wet gym shoes. (Don't ask what “olfactory” is. Look it up in the dictionary.)

Mothers have never considered any of these senses a bonus. We call them instincts for survival. Without them we would be mortal and vulnerable. (Don't make such a face. It'll freeze that way and then where will you be?)

Someday, when your Motherhood genes develop, you too will know when someone is in the refrigerator even though you are at a PTA meeting. You will know shoes are wet and muddy when you can't even find them. You will sense your child is lying to you even while clutching a Bible in one hand, a rosary in the other and is standing under a picture of Billy Graham.

Mothers are just normal people really. We don't pretend to be perfect or to have all the answers to child-rearing.

Why, throughout the years, there are a lot of aspects of children for which I profess complete ignorance. For example...

Who Is I. Dunno?

Ever since I can remember, our home has harbored a fourth child—I. Dunno. Everyone sees him but me. All I know is, he's rotten.

“Who left the front door open?”

“I. Dunno.”

“Who let the soap melt down the drain?”

“I. Dunno.”

“Who ate the banana I was saving for the cake?”

“I. Dunno.”

Frankly, I. Dunno is driving me nuts. He's lost two umbrellas, four pairs of boots and a bicycle. He has thirteen books overdue from the library, hasn't brought home a paper from school in three years, and once left a thermos of milk in the car for three weeks.

The other day the phone rang. I ran from the mailbox, cut my leg, tore off a fingernail in the door and got to the phone in time to see my son hanging up. “Who was it?” I asked breathlessly.

“I. Dunno. He hung up.”

When I told my neighbor about it she said, “Cheer up. I've had an invisible child for years.”

“What's his name?”

“Nobody.”

“Is he rotten?”

“He makes Dennis the Menace look like a statue. He cracked the top of an heirloom candy dish, tears up the paper before anyone gets to read it, and once when I was driving the car pool, he nearly knocked me senseless with a ball bat.”

“Ha!” I said bitterly, “you should have seen I. Dunno. He left thirteen lights burning the other night when he went out. I don't know how much longer I can stand it.”

This morning at breakfast I said to my husband, “Who wants liver for dinner this evening?”

He looked up and said, “I dontcare.”

That can only mean one thing. I. Dunno has a brother.

At What Age Is a Child Capable of Dressing Himself?

Some say when a child can reach the dirty clothes hamper without falling in, he is ready to assume responsibility for what he wears.

A child develops individuality long before he develops taste. I have seen my kid straggle into the kitchen in the morning with outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle.

There is always one child in the family who thrives on insecurities and must have her emotional temperature taken every five minutes. I call it the “Parade of the Closet.” Beginning at 7 a.m. she will appear at breakfast fully clothed and ready for school. Before the cereal has stopped exploding in the bowl, she has disappeared to her room and is in another complete outfit. Four words from her mother (“You look nice today”) and she is off again to her bedroom in tears for still another complete change.

She plays the same musical clothes until she runs out of clothes/the bus leaves/her mother is institutionalized... whichever comes first.

There is always the kid who has an aversion to clean clothes. He is allergic to creases in trousers, socks that have soft toes, underwear that is folded, and sweaters you can sniff without passing out. He's the child who always applauds the Ring Around the Collar commercials.

The opposite is the youngster who neither desires what is in his closet nor what is in the dirty clothes hamper. He wants what has to be ironed. I have always said, “If I had nothing in my ironing bag but a diaper, that kid would wear a top hat and go to school dressed as the New Year.”