If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? (8 page)

This country has to make a hard-and-fast rule about greeting people with a kiss.

Either we all are, or we all aren't. Frankly, I gave up kissing people hello at the age of seven when my mother hired a piano teacher who chewed garlic. It was enough to make you do the Minute Waltz in ten seconds.

It wasn't until I began appearing on talk shows that I saw the return of the kissy-kissy. It was weird. The same persons who kissed you when you walked into the studio, also kissed you when you returned from the makeup room, the green room, and the ladies room. Not only that, but when you saw them again on the set, they acted like they hadn't seen you since World War I when they left you for dead in Paris with the fever.

Actually, kissing people hello takes some' skill. First, you have to establish who is going to be the kisser and who is going to be the kissee. There should be no indecision once the kisser has decided to plant one on. He or she should grab the kissee by either the hands or the shoulders and kiss from the left (only vampires approach from the right).

If you are kissing another woman, beware of earrings that will strike you blind, jewelry that can puncture the inflated parts of your body and instant asphyxiation in a nest of stiff hair. (I was once speared and deflated by an open pin on a name card that said, “Hello, My Name Is Inez Funkhouser.”)

Of prime consideration is the length of the kiss. What is considered good taste for a kiss of greeting? I have seen producers greet guests in such an enthusiastic way that I can only assume (a) he was giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dead woman or (b) they are leaving after the show to pick out the dishes.

A hello-greeting should be a quick, impersonal peck with all the passion of a sex-starved orangutan. Some kissers are so casual that while they are pecking you, their eyes are picking out the next kissee.

The person who is far-sighted encounters other problems in the kissing custom. I once embraced a water cooler for five minutes while insisting, “What do you mean I don't remember you, Florence?”

It is generally acknowledged that one woman kissing another, especially when she sees her all the time, is “senseless.”

As I said the other day when I kissed a man with a toothpick in his mouth, “Ouch.”

Search and Seizure Rights in the Laundry Room

I tacked a note up in the utility room yesterday that read, “All clothes left here over ninety days will be towed away at the owner's expense and sold at public auction.”

“What does that mean?” asked my youngest.

“It means you have diapers at the bottom of your stack of clothes and you are thirteen years old. It means I am sick of watching you dress each morning over the toaster. It means your clothes have a home and I want to see them in that home.”

“I've been meaning to talk with you about that,” he said. “Why did you throw my blue jeans in the wash?”

“Because they were in the middle of the floor.”

“Were they scrunched down to two little holes?”

I nodded. “What's that got to do with it?”

“When they're scrunched down like that, they aren't dirty.”

“So, how am I supposed to know when they are dirty?”

“The dirty ones are kicked under the bed.”

“Why don't you put them on top of the bed?”

“Because I don't want to get them mixed up with the clean clothes.”

“Instead of sleeping with your clean clothes, why don't you take them out of the laundry room and put them in a drawer?”

“Because that's where I keep the dirty underwear I am going to wear again.”

I took a deep breath. “Why would you wear underwear two days in a row?”

“Because it is my lucky underwear.”

“For whom?” I asked dryly.

“I suppose you want me to put my clothes in the clothes hamper?” he asked.

“It crossed my mind.”

“With all the wet towels in there my clothes would get ruined.”

“You are supposed to put your wet towels on the towel rack.”

“What'll I do with all your pantyhose and sweaters?”

“PUT THEM IN THE UTILITY ROOM,” I shouted.

“Does this mean I lose my place dressing over the toaster?” he asked.

I planted a firm hand on his bottom. “No, it means your underwear just got unlucky.”

Regulation of Interstate Shopping Cart Traffic

It is my feeling that the driving age of shoppers operating supermarket carts be raised to thirty-five. Going to the supermarket used to be an adventure. Today, it's a combat mission.

As I was telling a friend the other day, "It's a jungle out there what with all the young, inexperienced drivers and little old ladies who only drive a shopping cart on Sundays after church.

The shopping cart is the most underrated traffic hazard on the road today. To begin with, no license is required in any state to drive these little vehicles. Anyone, regardless of age, vision, physical condition or mental health can get behind the wheels. (Occasionally, no one is behind the wheels, and these little irresponsible devils slam into cars in the parking lot without a driver in sight.)

To say that they are unsafe at any speed is an understatement. Consider, if you will, their deficiencies.

1. Grocery carts are never parked. They are welded together as a group at the door and must be separated by kicking, jiggling, wiggling, and a good stiff kick in the old breadbasket. This possibly accounts for the body construction-being weakened. (Yours, not the cart.)

2. A safety check would reveal there isn't a shopping cart that does not have all four wheels working. Unfortunately, all four are locked in stable directions. Three wheels want to shop and the fourth wants to go to the parking lot.

3. There are no seat belts for the children riding in shopping cart seats. Thus, it is not unusual to have them lean into your cart and eat half-a-pound of raw hamburger before you discover they are there.

4. Shopping carts should be like airplanes and nuns... it takes two to handle the situation. One to drive and one to gawk and read the caloric content of frozen lasagna.

5. Passing in the supermarket is hazardous because supermarket aisles are built to accommodate the width of one-and-one-half Carts. Thus, we encourage the reckless driver who fears the whipped cream topping in his cart is melting and who will purposely force your cart into produce.

And here's the shocker. There are no brakes on a shopping cart.

And what is worse... Ralph Nader doesn't even care.

Truth in Fair Packaging of Children

We do a lot of talking in this country about “fair packaging.” People like to know what they are getting before they get stuck with it.

I do a lot of thinking about how I am going to merchandise my kids. Frankly, in clear conscience, I don't see how I can let them go into marriage without slapping a sticker on their foreheads that reads: “This Person May Be Injurious to Your Mental Health.”

I have visions of some poor bride coming to me in tears and saying, “You tricked me. Why didn't you tell me your son doesn't know how to close a door after himself???”

It will only be a matter of time before she discovers he is lacking in other basic skills and I will feel guilty. For example, my son does not know how to wring out a washcloth. I have held washcloth seminars in which I have demonstrated the twist-wrist action. He still insists on dropping it sopping full of water wherever he happens to be standing.

He cannot fold a newspaper after he has read it, hear a phone ring unless it is for him, put a cap on a bottle or tube, or carry on a conversation unless his mouth is full.

He hangs his clothes on a chair, has a three-months' supply of snacks hidden in his desk drawer and makes his bed by smoothing it over with a coat hanger.

Unless he changes drastically, he will be impossible to live with. He insists on having his own window in the car, calling seconds on the meat before he sits down at the table, and once confessed to a friend he does not brush his teeth until school starts in September.

No, I would be a traitor to my own sex if I did not put a tag around this child's neck reading: Boy. Eleven years old. Made in U.S.A. Height, 4'8", net weight (including package) seventy-six pounds. Natural coloring, blond in summer, washed out in winter.

Capacity: Eight meals a day. Contains thirty-five hundred calories at all times. Artificially sweetened.

Unaffected by sun, rain and mud. Standard ingredients: 80 percent charm, 10 percent gold-bricking and 1 percent energy.

Read label carefully. Take eleven-year-old boy with tongue-in-cheek, grain of salt, and a frequent checkup.

Constitutionality of Drive-in Windows

It's just my own personal observation, but I don't think God ever meant for man to do his banking, order food, or mail a letter from the driver's seat of the car.

I have noted only two cars that have swung precariously up to the position where they can comfortably do business. One was a car from a demolition derby and the other was a rental. Neither had anything to lose.

Drive-in banks intimidate me the most, possibly because I am “on camera” and quite self-conscious about having the tellers gather and exclaim, "Watch this one, Dorothy. She's the one who fell apart when her fender was ripped off last week."

Consequently, I have become something of a conservative. I pull in a good six feet from the window and when the drawer slides out I find that by opening my car door and forcing my head through my shoulder seat belt, pushing on the brake pedal with my right foot and bending my knee against the gearshift for leverage, I can slide my deposit slip into the drawer providing (a) I discontinue breathing for a while and (b) there are no high winds to circulate my deposit slip in the parking lot.

The mailboxes are something else. I never pull up to one of them that I don't visualize a meeting of the postal department in Washington figuring out how to position the boxes.

“No, no, Chester,” says the designer. “You have placed the boxes on the driver's side of the car. We mustn't pamper them. Put them on the passenger side so the driver will have to put the car in park, straddle the stick shift in the console, cup his throat over the window and just try to sail the letter into this six-inch slot.”

“Then the slot should be just above the pick-up times that have become blurred and unreadable?” asked Chester.

“Higher, Chester, much higher,” smiled his boss.

Yelling an order for five into a clown's mouth is something else again. Especially when you are alone. I feel like such a fool shouting until the varicose veins in my neck surface.

As my husband observed, “You don't have to go to drive-ins, you know. You can always use your feet.”

Better to grow long arms.

Are Family Vacations Legal?

So many parents have been the victims of family vacations it is just possible that many of them are not familiar with some existing laws on how to handle some of the crises that arise. These are some of the most common inquiries:

THE ABANDON-CHILD LAW

It is illegal in forty-seven states to leave a child in a rest room and pretend it was a mistake. Maryland and Utah are sympathetic to parents if they can produce a doctor's certificate showing mental deterioration caused by the trip. Alaska (which is quite permissive) allows a mild sedation for the children.

THE NEW JERSEY vs. KIDDER LAW

It is illegal on the New Jersey turnpike for a child to hang out of the car window and make a noise like a siren. A decision on this was handed down in 1953, after forty-five cars (including three police cruisers) pulled over to the side of the road and tied up traffic for fifty-two hours.

THE KEY DECISION

All fifty states have rulings regarding children who collect rest room keys as souvenirs. One of the stiffer penalties is feeding a child a quart of Gatorade and putting him outside a locked door until the key shows up.

THE NO-FAULT LITTER LAW

Vehicles bearing families are not permitted to stop in the downtown area of cities having populations of four hundred and fifty thousand or more to look for a gym shoe that someone threw out of the moving vehicle. It is suggested that mothers put name tapes and full addresses on both shoes.

ANTI-NOISE LAWS

Nearly every city (including three ghost towns in Arizona) has the noise-pollutant law. If, in fact your vacationers have two radios playing at full volume, a barking dog and a father screaming, “Would anyone believe we didn't HAVE to get married,” and can be heard with all the car windows up, everyone in the car can be arrested.

SAFE DRIVING LAW

It is unlawful to inflate a twenty-foot life raft in a sedan blocking Daddy's view of the road, braid his hair while he is driving in the mountains, or tie his shoes together when he is going through a tunnel.

PRIVILEGED CONVERSATION

Conversation heard over CB radios and messages on rest-room walls repeated by children should not be grounds for shooting a child's tongue full of Novocain unless such child dwells on same for several miles.

REGAINING SINGLE STATUS ON AN EXIT RAMP

This is tricky, but some parents have opted to dissolve a family relationship on the spot by summoning legal aid. In this event, however, it is well to remember that children get custody of the station wagon.

Illegal Possession of Junk Food

A grade school principal in the East became so upset about the lack of nutrition in the lunches the children were eating, that he declared an edict banning junk food from the cafeteria.

I have a feeling the kids jammed the edict between two potato chips and two squares of Hershey chocolate and had it for lunch.

There is certainly no quarrel with the theory. Children should eat nutritionally balanced meals. But children do not take to ultimatums. I would have tried the old Accentuate-the-negative-reverse-the-positive-and-make-the-kid-think-your-idea-is-his-and-he's-driving-you-crazy approach.