Read The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank Online

Authors: Erma Bombeck

Tags: #Humor, #Form, #Essays, #Topic, #Marriage & Family

The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank (7 page)

BOOK: The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank
13.97Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Ceil was on the Atkins diet for which I cooked an egg swimming in butter served on a table in the corner due to her acute bad breath. [No diet is perfect.)

Marge was still on the drinking man's diet. She required a bottle, a little ice, and a clean glass. (Marge hadn't lost a pound, but it didn't seem to make any difference to her.)

Ethel was on the Vinegar-Kelp diet. (She worried us. She kept drifting toward the ocean.)

Wilma was enjoying maintenance on her Weight Watchers program. Before dinner was served, she ate the centerpiece (a candle and a plastic banana) and mumbled, “Bless me Jean Nidetch for I have sinned.”

I, of course, had my cottage cheese,

Why do women do it?

You're talking to a pro. There was a time when I derived some comfort out of the knowledge that one out of every three Americans is overweight. But I never saw the one. Everywhere I went I was flanked on either side by the two chart-perfect women.

I was surrounded by women whose pleats never separate when they sit down, who wear suspenders to hold up their underwear, who have concave stomachs and the gall to say to me, “I'm cutting down. Do you want my dessert, honey?”

Every dieter has her moment of truth when she faces up to the fact that she is overweight. Sometimes, it's just a little thing like seeing a $50 bill on the sidewalk and not being able to pick it up, or accusing the car wash of shrinking your seat belt, or having shortness of breath when you chew gum. With me, it was a photograph taken on the beach. You couldn't see the blanket I was sitting on, or the sand, and only a small part of the ocean.

My husband said, “The best diet in the world is to put that picture of yourself on the refrigerator door.”

He was right. The picture was delicious and actually contained few calories, but with the picture gone I fell into my old eating habits.

The Fat-Picture-on-the-Door diet is just one of many that have swept the country during the past decade, each one promising you more food than you can eat, instant results, and strangers on the bus coming up and asking you to dance.

There was one diet that wasn't publicized, but I think had great merit. It was called the Tall Rat Experiment X-70, or as it was popularly called, “Grow Up—Not Out.”

The program was perfected by a scientist named Bert Briarcuff whose basic philosophy was, “There is no such thing as a fat girl. They're only too short.” Of course; why hadn't anyone thought of that! Women weren't overweight. They were undertall.

He gathered together several cages of obese rats and went to work to make them look taller.

The results were astounding. Rats in wedgies looked five pounds thinner than those in loafers. The rats in jump suits with vertical stripes gave the illusion of being thin while those in polka dots looked grossly overweight.

Then he employed the old photographic trick. When a rat was talking with someone in the gutter, the rat placed himself on the curb. If his companion was on the curb, he stood on the steps. If his partner jumped on the steps, he would leap to a spouting above.

Briarcuff found that by teasing the rat's hair, his cheekbones would stand out like Katharine Hepburn's. Women didn't have to starve to death any more. They would just have to learn to create an illusion of tallness.

The Tall Rat Experiment X-70 spread like wildfire in our neighborhood. We shopped at tall girl shops to get the waistlines to hang around our hips. We volunteered to take off our hats at movies. I personally made no new friends over five foot two.

At a dance one night I vowed to dance with no one taller than I. I bet I danced with every ten-year-old boy there.

After six months, however, the Tall Rat Experiment X-70 began to bore me. I was sick of stacking pillows in the car to make me look like my head was coming through the roof.

Besides, I had a new toy. The kids chipped in and bought me a Flab-Control belt. As they explained it to me, there was no dieting. All I had to do was put the adjustable belt, which was equipped with a small electronic buzzer, around my waist. When my stomach muscles became slack, the buzzer would sound. It was a case of chronic flab. The noise drove me crazy. I went back to cottage cheese.

Desperate, I enrolled in one of the Gastric Show and Tell classes offered at the high school in the evenings.

Their program seemed quite revolutionary to me. Foods that I had always considered decorations for the mantel like carrots, cucumbers, squash, and chard were touted as edibles. Following interesting lectures on nutrition and how certain foods were needed for the body, our instructor, Miss Feeney, asked, “Are there any questions?”

“What if I go through all of this and discover the life after this one is all fat people?”

“Don't make trouble,” she said softly. “Just try the foods.”

By the end of three weeks when I had not dropped an ounce, Miss Feeney took me aside and said, “You promised you would try to stick to our diet. What happened?”

“Miss Feeney,” I said, “you have to face up to what you are dealing with. Dieters are basically nice people. I have a snout full of integrity. I don't throw chewing gum on the sidewalk. I don't put less postage on my letter than I know it takes. And I don't lie about my age. But when it comes to diets, you can't believe a word I say.”

“You will live to eat those words,” she said.

My face brightened. “Are they fattening?”

Oh, there were others. The denture-adhesive diet where you cement your teeth together and the one-size-fits-all pantyhose worn to the table, but I always came back to cottage cheese.

It's not so bad—a little gravy over it once in awhile, a cottage cheese sandwich between two warm slices of homemade bread, a cottage cheese sundae with a glob of chocolate.. . .

 

 

 

Unknown
Chapter Six

YA GOT TROUBLE

news item: Plans for a proposed drive-in movie will be submitted to members of the Suburbian Gems Plat Council at Wednesday night's meeting.

The theater, to be known as The Last Roundup, would lie erected on the patch of ground between “clean fill dirt wanted. call after 5 p.m. at 959-8800” and Ned Stems' Car Wash. Estimated to occupy about thirty acres, it will feature a western motif, 350 speakers, a refreshment stand, and permanent personal facilities. Prof. Harold Swill, vocal band director of Suburbian Gems High School, is heading a group of dissidents opposing The Last Roundup and is expected to speak out against the proposal.

“A drive-in movie!”

"Don't you understand? Friends, either you are closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated by the presence of a drive-in movie in your community.

"Well, ya got trouble, my friends, right here, I say trouble right here in Suburbian Gems. Sure, I'm a lover of the arts and certainly mighty proud, I say mighty proud to say it.

"I consider the hours I've spent with Sousa and Rom-berg are golden, helps you cultivate timing, discipline, a natural ear, and a way to get girls.

“Did you ever take a pocket comb, covered with toilet paper on a picnic and improvise with Tiger Rag—hah! I say any boob can fake a few bars of the ”Beer Barrel Polka," but I call that tacky—the first big step on the road to the depths of degrada ... I say first the Rape of Mozart, then a near-beer six-pack.

"And the next thing you know your son is marching with hair right down to his knees, listening to some stoned-out hippie talking about pot.

"Not a shiny cooking pot with Mom's ham and beans, no siree, but a pot where they freak out of their skulls, makes you sick I should say, now friends let me tell you what I mean, you got R (restricted), X (nothing censored) and a GP where Flipper gets a hickey—movies that make the difference between a pervert and a bum with a capital B that rhymes with D that stands for drive-in.

"And all week long your Suburbian Gems youth'll be goofing off—I say your young men will be goofing— goofing away their noontime, suppertime, choretime too, hook the speaker to the car, never mind getting the lawn fertilized, the sand in the litter box, sitting little sister and never bother delivering the Sunday paper till the supervisor calls on a Sunday afternoon and that's trouble, my friend—lots of trouble—I'm thinking of the kids in the back seat, kissing till their braces spark, cold popcorn, melted ice balls and that's trouble, right here in Suburbian Gems with a capital T which rhymes with D which stands for drive-in.

"Now I know all you folks are the right kind of parents. I'm gonna be perfectly frank. Would you like to know what kind of conversation goes on while they're watchin' those outdoor flicks? They'll be talkin' about Gatorade, trying out filter tips, popping in breath mints like pill-popping fiends, and bragging all about how they read Valley of the Dolls in one swell evening.

"One fine night as they leave the drive-in, headed for the malt shop, you'll find your son, your daughter in the arms of an ovcr-scxcd .sophomore, mattress-minded—all .systems go, parental guidance . . .

"Friends! The idle motor is the devil's playground!

"Trouble, oh ya got trouble, trouble right here in Suburbian Gems, trouble with a capital T that rhymes with D that stands for drive-in. We surely got trouble—gotta Figure out a way to stamp out puberty.

"Trouble—trouble—trouble.

"Mothers of Suburbian Gems. Heed the warnings and the telltale signs of corruption before it's too late.

"The minute your son leaves the house, does he stuff his 4-H bylaws in the glove compartment?

"Does he take a blanket on a date and tell you the heater in the car isn't working and it's August?

"Does he have a copy of Playboy hidden between the pages of Boy's Life?

"Has he ever refused to finish a knock-knock joke in your presence?

"Are certain words creeping into his conversation— words like 'far out' and 'Linda Lovelace' and 'Ma, where's your purse?'

"Well, my friends, you got trouble, trouble with a capital T that rhymes with D that stands for drive-in.

"You surely got trouble, right here in Suburbian Gems, remember God, Motherhood, Flag—and Paul Harvey.

"Oh, oh you got trouble, terrible, terrible trouble that field of passion under a sky of stars is the flag of sin.

“You got trouble, trouble, trouble, oh great big trouble right here in Suburbian Gems with a T that rhymes with D that stands for drive-in.”

news item: Plans for a proposed drive-in movie were approved last night when members of the Suburbian Gems Plat Council reached a compromise.

Originally, council members complained that the speakers might contribute to noise pollution in the area. Approximately 140 students, representing Suburbian Gems High School, volunteered as a group to turn the sound off completely during the showing of movies.

Prof. Harold Swill, band director of Suburbian Gems High School, said, “It is maturity like this that restores my faith in young people.”

 

 

 

Unknown
Chapter Seven

IT COMES WITH THE TERRITORY

 

Loneliness

No one talked about it a lot, but everyone knew what it was.

It was the day you alphabetized your spices on the spice rack.

Then you dressed all the naked dolls in the house and arranged them on the bed according to size.

You talked to your plants and they fell asleep on you.

It was a condition, and it came with the territory.

I tried to explain it to my neighbor, Helen.

“I'm depressed, Helen,” I said, “and I think I know what it is. (Excuse me) 'Lonnie! I see you sneaking out of the house with my mixer and I know what you are going to do with it. Put it back!' ”

“More coffee?” asked Helen.

“Just a half a cup. I've seen this coming for a long time. The symptoms are all there.”

“What symptoms?” asked Helen.

“Helen, I'm so bored. I went to the food locker yesterday to visit my meat.”

“You're kidding.”

“No. And the other day I flushed a Twinkle down the toilet just to please Jack Lalanne. (Just a minute) 'Is anyone going to get the phone? Never mind. Hello. Yes. What do you want? I'm in therapy with Helen. You'll be home late and don't wait dinner. Right.' Now, where was I, Helen? Oh yes, my behavior. It's bizarre. Remember when a man came out to clean the septic tank? I dropped everything, ran out, and sat on the edge of the hole and asked, 'So, what's new with you?' ”

Helen nodded silently.

“I called my mother long distance the other day just to tell her I found a green stamp in my sweeper bag.”

Helen stirred her coffee slowly. “Did you ever put up your hair to answer the door?”

“Yes. Oh yes,” I said with relief. “Excuse me, Helen, someone's at the door. (Later) It was Joan. She just dropped off her two and she'll be back for lunch. Where was I? Oh yes, my problem. I find myself doing odd things I've never done before. Remember when Dr. Joyce Brothers was on a local talk show and they invited questions from the audience? I called in, Helen. I really did. And I announced to the entire English-speaking world that I wanted her psychological opinion of a man who insisted on sleeping next to the wall. Did I ever tell you that, Helen? Bill refuses to sleep on the outside of a bed. He's positively paranoid about the inside track. Didn't it ever occur to him that just once I might like to sleep next to the wall?”

“Your phone is ringing again,” said Helen.

“It was the school nurse. Wanted permission to give my son an aspirin. What he really needs is an enema. I wonder how many people are wandering the streets today in glasses who only need an enema. More coffee?”

“No, I can't stay long,” said Helen.

“I've thought about my problem ever since we moved out here and I think I've finally put my finger on it. Every morning, we see the men driving out of paradise onto the freeway and into the city. Leaving us to what? Did I tell you I spent an hour and a half the other morning putting together a cannon out of balsa wood that I found in the cereal box only to discover one of (lie kids swallowed the wheel and we couldn't play with it? Wouldn't you know if you had a wheel in your mouth?”

Helen sighed. “You going to the Frisbee recital at the school Friday?”

“I suppose so. Hang on a minute. There goes Nancy and I still wanted to talk with her about Wednesday. 'Hey Nancy! We going to that 1-cent tree sale Friday after the store? Let's go early. It's a mob scene.' Sometimes, Helen, I wonder why we moved to the suburbs. As I told the girls at Trim Gym class last week, I never thought I'd see the day when I'd want my own apartment before the kids did.”

“You're just restless,” said Helen.

“No! I'm not restless. That's not the word,” I said vehemently. “Restless is having lunch with your wigs and having a good time with them. It's a temporary condition that goes away. I'm talking about old, Helen. I'm old. Don't protest. I know what I am. I'm old and fighting for my identity in a young society. Everyone around me is under twenty. My doctor carries a gym bag. Our lawyer is still in braces. And I swear to you my dentist had a string on his mittens last winter. Do you know what it is to go into a confessional and have your priest reeking of Clearasil?”

“It's not your imagination?”

“It's not my imagination. I don't know what is wrong with me. I'm . . . I'm so desperate. I purposely picked a fight with the hamster yesterday. I stood in front of the hall mirror and said, 'So, who did you expect? Snow White?' ”

“There's nothing wrong with the way you look,” comforted Helen.

“I'm a mental midget, Helen. My husband is growing professionally every hour and I didn't even know penguins got barnacles on their feet until Pearl Bailey missed it on Hollywood Squares. It's hard to talk to a man who has a meaningful relationship with the TV set.”

“Well,” said Helen, “I've got to be going.”

“Say it! I'm boring, aren't I?”

“Of course you're not boring.”

“Do you know that if I had continued my night school classes I would have graduated from college this June. That's right. If I had just found my car keys I could have picked up my B.A. and could be one of those women who only wash on Saturdays and freeze their bread.”

Helen looked at me squarely. “Do you know what you are?”

For a moment, there was only the silence of a toilet being flushed consecutively, two dogs chasing one another through the living room, a horn honking in the driveway, a telephone ringing insistently, a neighbor calling her children, the theme of “Gilligan's Island” blaring on the TV set, a competing stereo of John Denver, one child at my feet chewing a hole in the brown-sugar bag, and a loud voice from somewhere screaming, “I'm telling.”

“I'm lonely, ”I said softly.

“Tell your husband,” said Helen.

Tell my husband.

I once read a poll of what husbands think their wives do all day long.

The results were rather what you would expect.

Thirty-three percent said women spent five hours out of each day putting lint on their husband's socks.

Twenty-seven percent said they spent four hours daily pouring grease down the sink and watching it harden to give their husbands something to do when they got home.

Ten percent swore their wives held the door open all day to make sure all the warm/cool air [depending on the season) got out of the house.

A walloping 58 percent said women divided their time between hiding from the children, watching soap operas, drinking coffee, shrinking shirt collars. discarding one sock from every pair in the drawer, lugging power tools out to the sandbox for the kids to play with, and trying to get the chenille creases out of their faces before their husbands came home.

I was dialing Mrs. Craig's number when my husband came home one night after my conversation with Helen.

“Who are you calling?” he asked.

“Mrs. Craig. I thought she could sit with the children for a few days while I ran into the city to visit Mother.”

My husband leaned over and gently replaced the receiver. “Do you honestly believe that I can't handle things around here without you? I'll do double time between here and the office and fill in until you get back.”

“You've never been a strong man,” I said.

“What kind of a crack is that?”

“I'm only suggesting that any man who has to have a spinal block to trim his toenails doesn't have the greatest threshold of pain in the world.”

“And who went to bed for three days when she had her ears pierced?”

“That's not true. Look, I was only trying to spare you. Are you sure you can handle things around here? The kids? The cooking? The laundry? The routine?”

“Does Dean Martin know how to handle a martini?” he grinned. “Of course I can handle this stuff. Don't worry about it. You just go off and do what you have to do and don't give us another thought.”

I didn't give them a thought until I let myself into Mother's house in the city. “Call home,” she said.

“One quick question,” said my husband, “what does 'Bwee, no nah noo' mean?”

“Who said it?”

“Whatya mean who said it? Your baby just said it and looked kinda desperate.”

“It means, 'I have to go to the bathroom.' ”

“Thanks, that's all 1 needed to know. Have a good ...”

“It also means, ”I want a cookie. Where are my coloring books? The dog just crawled into the dryer. There's a policeman at the door. I am floating my $20 orthopedic shoes in the John.' The kid has a limited vocabulary and has to double up."

“I can handle this. It's just that she looks so miserable.”

“It also means, 'It's too late for the bathroom.' ”

As I readied for bed, the phone rang again.

“What's up?” I asked.

“No problem,” he said cheerfully. “It's just that Maxine Miltshire just called and can't drive the car pool tomorrow because she's subbing for Janice Winerob on the bowling team. She can pick up—unless it rains. Her convertible top won't go up. However, if the weather is decent she can pick up and trade with Jo Caldwell who is pregnant and three weeks overdue, but who had a doctor who was weak in math. That means I will drive Thursday unless Jo Caldwell's doctor lucks out. In that case I'll have to call Caroline Seale because I have an early meeting and it might rain. Do you understand any of this?”

“No.”

“I'll call you tomorrow night.”

The next night I answered the phone. There was a brief silence. Then, “Well, I hope you're happy, Missy. I am now the only thirty-eight-year-old child in my office who has been exposed to Roseola. I was late for work because little Buster Smarts was eating chili off the dashboard of my car and spilled it all over the upholstery and my job is in jeopardy.”

“Why is your job in jeopardy?” I asked.

“Because your son answered the phone this morning while I was putting catsup on sandwiches and I heard him tell Mr. Weems, 'Daddy can't come to the phone now. He's hitting the bottle.' ”

“Tomorrow is Saturday. It'll get better,” I promised.

The phone rang early Saturday. “Hello,” I giggled. “This is Dial-a-Prayer.” “Oh, you're cute,” he snarled, “real cute. Just a couple of questions here. First, where are the wheels off the sweeper?”

“On the back of the bicycle in the garage.”

“Check. Where does the washer walk to when it walks?”

“It never gets any farther than the door.”

“Check. When was the last time you were in the boys' bedroom?”

“When I was looking for eight place settings of my good china.”

I arrived home much later from the city than I intended. Everyone was in bed. My husband staggered to the door.

“I'm home,” I announced brightly. “Tell me, why is there an X chalked on the side of our house?” He rubbed his eyes tiredly.

“A baby sitter put it there. I think we're marked for demolition.”

I wandered through the house. The dog was drinking out of an ashtray. There was a pad of blank checks by the phone with messages scribbled on them. The blackboard had a single message on it, “I'm leaving and I'm not coming back.” Signed, “Daddy.”

“Why is the baby asleep in the bathtub?” I asked.

“She drank four glasses of water just before bedtime.”

“There is a crease on your face shaped like a duck.”

“I had to separate the boys so I slept in the baby's bed.”

I opened up the refrigerator and a leftover reached for me and I slammed the door shut.

“What happened?” I asked, spreading my arms out to make a wide circle.

“Don't start up,” he said. “It's all your fault. I had dinner so long in the oven that the bucket caught fire.”

“What bucket?”

“The cardboard bucket holding the chicken.”

“You're supposed ...”

“Don't say anything. I mean it. While I was trying to put out the fire, your baby chose a rather inopportune time to get a penny stuck up her nose. I've got thirty-five boys in the bathroom watching movies. I tried to make a drink and there are no ice cubes, and besides, Maxine called to tell me I've been named homeroom mother! And all the while you are living it up at your mother's, drinking out of clean glasses.”

“You'll feel better after a good night's sleep,” I said as he crawled back into the crib.

I was right. The next morning he turned to me brightly and said, “Good-bye, dear. You'll find everything in shipshape order. Boys, kiss your father good-bye.”

The boys turned away and one said flatly, “He murdered our guppies.”

“We'll talk about it tonight,” he said. Then he whispered, “By the way, could you call and let me know how Lisa makes out on 'As the World Turns'?”

The Pampered Dog

When the dogs in the city talked among themselves, the conversation always drifted to the suburbs.

It was the dream of every canine to someday live out where every dog had his own tree, where bad breath had been conquered, and where fleas had to register at the city limits and carry their I.D.'s at all times.

The suburban dog had it made. Owners pampered them to death with dietary dog food, dental appointments, knitted stoles to take off the evening chill, dog beds shaped like hearts, doggie bar nibbles, and car seats.

I personally felt I could live a fulfilled life without a live-in lawn fertilizer, but my husband convinced me the children would grow up to steal hubcaps without the security and affection of a dog.

In a weak moment, we bought Arlo.

The first day Arlo came home, his feet never touched the floor. In a single day he was fed eight times, burped five, danced on the TV set, slid down the bannister, was given a bath, blown dry with my hair dryer, visited twelve homes, rode on a bicycle, and barked long distance on the phone to Grandma. He slept his first night under my dual-control thermal blanket.

On the second day, Arlo continued to reign. It took eight saucepans to warm his dinner, he watched a puppet show staged by the children for his benefit and as he headed for the door, one of the children slapped his brother while the third child leaped for the dog and opened the door . . . first.

On the third day, there were some complaints from the children that Arlo had kept them awake all night with his howling. When I suggested the dog be fed, one son said his brother did it, who vowed his sister did it, who said, “It's not my turn.”

BOOK: The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank
13.97Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

At the Scene of the Crime by Dana Stabenow
Shades of Gray by Norman, Lisanne
Pinion by Lake, Jay
True Lies by Ingrid Weaver
The Rising Dead by Devan Sagliani
Her Gentle Giant: No Regrets by Heather Rainier
The Summer We All Ran Away by Cassandra Parkin