Forever, Erma

by Erma Bombeck

  “We’ve been driving for hours. Why don’t we stop and ask directions at a service station?”

  “Because I am not lost.”

  “Why are you so stubborn? What would happen if you stopped and asked directions? Would your beard stop growing? Would your voice become high-pitched? You don’t need a wife and family with you. You need Lowell Thomas and a Boy Scout patrol.”

  “Will you stop acting like a fishwife and quiet those kids down? One has his wet nose on the back of my neck.”

  “It isn’t a kid. It’s a lost cow.”

  The Last Family Vacation—June 1972

  When you talk about it in years to come, you will refer to it as “The Last Family Vacation.”

  It will start out like a score of other family vacations. One kid will yell because he has to sit on the hard hump in the middle of the seat, another will sulk for 300 miles because he can’t hear the radio, and another will hang his feet out the window because his legs are cramped. (When did they grow so tall?)

  There will still be the perennial recording of “When we gonna eat?” (muted because their mouths are full of food). And you’ll ask, “Anyone for a hamburger? A salad? A hot dog?” (Did it always cost $20 to buy them lunch?)

  Boredom hangs like a thick fog over the entire backseat.

  “Hey, kids,” you say. “Look at the colors in that mountain.”

  “Gross.”

  “Would you believe that sunset? It’s like a painting.”

  “Gross.”

  “Hey, group, Daddy and I are going to chip in and buy you all a new word when we stop.”

  “Gross.”

  (When did the excitement of a mountain give way to Mad magazine?)

  At the beach, you begin to suspect things are changing when you and Daddy are the only two splashing around in the water. One child is in a phone booth making plans to split. Another has found a girl and is trying to palm himself off as an orphan. And the other is going through Daddy’s trousers getting the car keys. (When did they stop talking to us?)

  Going home, it is like old times. They are excited at the idea of going swimming with a friend, making it in time for a party, and bolting to their rooms to turn up the stereo until their ears shrivel.

  As you unload the car, there is a silence. Without saying a word, everyone seems to know what the silence means. It is a memorial to the last family vacation.

  It will never be the same again. The wet diapers in the plastic bags under your feet, the soggy cookies, strains of “This Old Man He Played One,” burying your feet in the sand, cries of “He’s hitting,” the cold caves, the burnt hot dogs, the camper that leaked, the giggles at bedtime, the Laundromats...and the wonderful, warm feeling that a woman feels when she sees her family tucked in at night.

  It is the end of an era—and the beginning of a new one.

  You might allow yourself the luxury of a tear, or you might say to yourself, half in anger, “God! Why did I spend every summer vacation yelling, ‘Don’t throw rocks in the water!’ and ‘Don’t sit on the seats!’ ”

  Parking the Family Trailer—June 1972

  There is nothing in this world any more appealing than an ad for a camping trailer. It pictures a hysterical family of four grouped around a fire on a deserted beach. The kids are carrying wood and playing Frisbee. The family dog is chasing the family rabbit (in jest, not lust). And Daddy (looking like Mark Trail) is whittling the heads of four presidents out of an old tree trunk.

  Well, I am here to tell you that the family who camps together gets cramps together.

  We have been camping for seven years and have yet to have an evening where we all go to bed speaking to one another. The problem has remained the same for the past seven years: parking the trailer.

  Some trailer parks have pull-in parking spaces. This is for marriages that cannot stand too much strain. For the rest of us there is the trailer park where you have to back in the trailer, being careful to line up evenly with the picnic table and the water and sewer hookups.

  To assist my husband with this task, there are two large mirrors on either side of the car, three children, one adult (a high school graduate) and a barking dog. Before I record our dialogue, I will only comment that, “You never know what you have married until you have seen him back up a twenty-four-foot travel trailer into a spot between two trees.”

  Helpers: “Turn your wheels.”

  Husband: “Which way?”

  Helpers: “That way.”

  Husband: “Which way is that way? I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. You have to say right or left.”

  Helpers: “Right...no, left...no, right.”

  Husband: “Make up your mind. And which wheels right, the car or the trailer?”

  Helpers: “Back up. Now stop. Stop! Stop! Why didn’t you stop?”

  Husband: “I couldn’t hear you in all this rain with the dog barking.”

  Helpers: “It isn’t raining. You hit the water connection. When we motion like this—”

  Husband: “I’ll pull up and back in again. Now, for crying out loud, guide me.” (Helpers wave madly.) “Why are you directing me in this way?”

  Helpers: “We weren’t. We were just waving to our neighbors.”

  Husband: “It’s a crummy time to get friendly. Why don’t you wait till I’m parked?”

  Helpers: “We’d better be friendly now. You just backed into their tent. You know, the trouble with you...”

  We should have learned something from the pioneers. They had the entire West to park in, and they pulled their wagons into a circle.

  Showing Slides of Vacation—February 26, 1974

  We have just been on vacation and returned with a total of 610 slides of our trip.

  I cannot tell you how invaluable these 610 slides have been to us.

  I can walk on a crowded bus solid with bodies and announce, “I have 610 slides to show,” and within seconds I have my choice of any seat on the bus.

  In the middle of being mugged I can say to my assailant, “I have 610 slides to show you when you are finished,” and he will drop my handbag and disappear faster than I can say “Turn off the lights.”

  I would make a conservative claim that if I took these 610 slides to a war no one would show up.

  Actually, it was by sheer chance that we stumbled onto this secret weapon that could be an answer to overpopulation. We invited a group of our dearest friends over one evening for dinner, and after coffee my husband said, “Speaking of antelope, we have some really great shots of antelope that we took on our vacation. Get the light, Erma.”

  Before I could reach the switch, one guest said his malaria was returning, his wife feigned false labor (she wasn’t even pregnant), another couple decided to try a trial separation beginning at that moment, and one woman thought she heard her mother calling. (Her mother had been dead for eight years.) My husband and I both concurred. “Who needs friends?”

  We invited our minister to the house, figuring he was a man of God and welcomed suffering, but when we mentioned our 610 slides, he confessed he had always been afraid of the dark, especially when the only light was that of a slide projector, and left. As we saw him to the door my husband observed, “Who needs a minister who has it in for antelope?”

  We didn’t tell Mother about the slides until she was settled comfortably in a deep chair. “Now we have a treat for you,” we said. “We are going to contribute to your knowledge of the antelope.”

  She fought desperately to get out of the chair and said, “I gave at the office.”

  So who needs a mother?

  My husband doused the lights and began to show the slides. I watched 386 slides of antelope rumps before I slipped quietly out of the room. So who needs a marriage?

  Continental Breakfast—August 17, 1975

  This year millions of Americans are busing their way through Europe on package tours that offer scenic grandeur at budget prices. My husband and I just whipped through nine countries in 21 days.
(OK, so I looked down to change the film in my camera and missed Italy.)

  How are they able to offer this bargain to travelers, you ask? Simple. The Continental Breakfast.

  To the non-traveler, I must explain that the Continental Breakfast consists of a paper napkin, a knife, fork and spoon for which you have no use, a cup and saucer, a pot of coffee or tea, and a container of marmalade dated PLEASE USE BEFORE JULY, 1936. Finally, two four-letter words that have come to strike terror in the hearts of travelers everywhere: hard roll.

  The Continental Breakfast (literal translation: Keep Out of Reach of Children) has a gradual but unmistakable effect on people who eat it for a period of 10 days or more.

  For the first several days, partakers of the hard roll will pretend it is just the thing they need—the Famine Is Fun number. Women will pinch their waists and say, “I’ve been eating too much on this trip. A light breakfast is just what I need.”

  The truth is, the hard roll is not designed to take off weight. Even though eaten in small pieces, once in the body it will form again into its original ball and build a hard wall across the hips and the stomach. After the eleventh day, the hard rolls make you mean.

  We had our first hard roll in Ireland on July 1.

  By July 15, the group was irritable and noncommunicative. On the seventeenth, while in Venice, my husband, in a fit of violence, grabbed a hard roll, carved his initials in it, WLB 1975, and sent it back to the kitchen.

  By the nineteenth day, the prospect of a hard roll for breakfast forced some travelers to remain in their beds with their faces turned to the wall. Others used the hard roll to pry their luggage open, prop open their doors or rub stubborn stains from their shirt collars.

  On the twenty-first day, we looked at our last Continental Breakfast in Paris. My husband ran his fingers across a roll that was initialed “WLB 1975.”

  “It’s just a coincidence, isn’t it?” he asked.

  Some things, it’s best not to know.

  Elusive Rest Area—July 11, 1976

  Last summer, when our family took to the highways, we noted that every 15 miles or so there was an exit on the freeway marked REST AREA. As we whizzed by, we saw happy families at play. Daddy was making yummies over a grill, the kids were tossing a Frisbee, Mother was moving a picnic table that was chained to the ground to the shade, and the dog was holding his stomach with laughter.

  “We could do that,” I said enviously. “It wouldn’t take much to toss a cooler, a bag of charcoal and a few folding chairs in the backseat. We could stretch our legs, use the facilities, get a cold drink of water, and Daddy could read one of those big maps framed in glass to find out where we are.”

  This year, everyone forgot but me. When we packed the car, I announced, “No more driving for days to find a restaurant where grease is the beverage. This year, it’s rest areas for the Bombecks.”

  We were on the road only 15 minutes when we saw our first rest area. “Want to stop?” asked my husband.

  “No need.” I smiled confidently. “There’ll be another one in thirty miles.”

  I was right; 30 miles later was another rest area. Another 30 miles, we saw a third. Then lunchtime came and we never saw another one.

  At two o’clock, the children became restless. One started to kick the back of the seat in protest. “Sit back and put your seat belt on,” I commanded.

  “I ate it,” came the reply.

  At 2:30, one child with his nose pressed against the window shouted, “Rest area spotted at nine o’clock!” We swiveled around and said numbly, “Rest area acknowledged...negative...on wrong side of turnpike.”

  At three o’clock, our stomachs were singing as a group. We were irritable, listless and one of the kids had raw hamburger breath, but I couldn’t prove it.

  “Check the road map,” said my husband. “Isn’t that a rest area marked with a little tepee? Don’t you see it?”

  “No. It’s my saliva,” I said.

  By four o’clock we could stand it no longer. My husband pulled over to a soft shoulder under a sign that read NO PARKING ANYTIME. Here, we ripped through plastic with our teeth, ate cold wieners, and watched tomatoes drip off our elbows while we were blown off our feet by passing traffic.

  We weren’t on our way 15 minutes when we saw a sign: REST AREA.

  I knew without looking that there would be one every 30 miles from here on in.

  Seeing America by Headlights—September 16, 1980

  It’s been explained to me a thousand times, and I still don’t understand it.

  Why is it that men embarking on a fun-filled, pleasure-seeking, leisure-paced vacation feel obliged to start at four in the morning?

  I ask you, what good are breathtaking colors of the Smoky Mountains in the dark? How can I feel the pulse and excitement of New York City when David Hartman going to work and a passed-out wino are the only things on the street? What good is a vacation if you can’t keep awake through lunch?

  We were the first family ever to “See America First” by headlights. Every morning before hitting the road, the alarm would go off in the middle of the night. Picking my way through the darkness, I’d guide arms and legs through clothes. It was like threading a needle with wet spaghetti. As the kids continued to sleep, I’d walk them to the car and arrange them in the backseat. I’d wait until the motor was running and we were ready to leave before I did my last dastardly deed on those still sleeping: flush!

  My children never awoke asking “Where are we?” It was always “What time is it?” They could never play games other children played, like Count the Chevys or Out-of-State-License-Plate Rummy. There weren’t any other cars on the road.

  We’d sit there like zombies, listening to the hog and grain markets on the car radio, trying to figure out which meal we would spoil if we ate a candy bar.

  Once as we stopped at a roadside park for a potty break and I hooked my sweater over the hood ornament to keep from falling, a station wagon pulled in with another family. They looked terrible. The kids stumbled along with blankets dragging on the ground, their hair uncombed, their eyes puffy and glazed. The woman and I didn’t say anything at first. Our eyes met in that rare moment of understanding without words. Finally she said, “Would you have married him if you had known he was nocturnal?”

  A few weeks ago on vacation, the alarm went off at 3:30 A.M. as my husband whipped out of bed and began to dress.

  “Why are you doing this?” I mumbled.

  “I’ve told you before, the children travel better by night when they can sleep.”

  “We don’t have children with us.”

  “There’s no traffic on the road and I can make better time.”

  “We’re flying.”

  “If we start early, we can stop early and be sure of getting a hotel room.”

  “We’re going home.”

  “I’m basically sadistic.”

  Now that makes sense!

  Eleven-Piece Vacation Wardrobe—July 21, 1981

  The ad said if I bought an 11-piece coordinated vacation wardrobe, I could make 135 clothes combinations and exist for three weeks living out of one suitcase.

  The coordinated ensemble included a basic dress, reversible skirt, slacks, blouse, jacket, shorts, T-shirt, vest, two scarves and a cap with a bill.

  I will not bore you with all 135 combinations, only the interesting ones.

  Three days out, I outgrew my slacks.

  Four days out, I ripped the breast pocket on the jacket and could wear it only when my arms were folded or if I used one of the scarves as a sling and pretended I had a broken arm.

  Five days out, the blouse did not dry and the scarf faded over it, forcing me to wear it with the darts facing backward.

  The T-shirt shrunk on the sixth day and I found that by buying another cap with a bill and joining the two caps with a scarf, I had an interesting bra in which to play tennis.

  The skirt was getting on everyone’s nerves, and one night as it stood in the cor
ner of my room, I noticed it still had my body molded in it. The next day I turned it around, put my blouse on the outside and told everyone I was expecting in four months.

  Mercifully, on the eleventh day the hem dropped out of the dress, giving me a new look for evenings.

  The ugly oil spot on the reversible skirt penetrated both sides on the fourteenth day, giving me a choice of wearing my handbag on my left side or my right.

  The vest was the only clean thing in my suitcase by the seventeenth day, but I didn’t know what to do with it. When my blouse was ordered off the sightseeing bus by a vote of 43-0, I wore it sleeveless with pins holding it together.

  By the twentieth day, nothing mattered anymore. I wore the scarf with the oil-stained skirt, the slacks with the broken zipper with the two caps with a bill, the dress with the torn jacket, the T-shirt with the shorts. On the last night, there was a masquerade party. I went as myself and won first prize.

  When I arrived home, there was one scarf that had been soaked in perfume that leaked. The fashion coordinator had thought of everything. All I had to do was to light a match, ignite it and, in time, forget all 11 pieces.

  Traveling with Tripod—July 27, 1982

  For those of you who think pictures grow on postcards, I will explain that a tripod is a three-legged stand that supports a camera so it will remain perfectly still.

  When fully extended, a tripod will stand waist-high and weigh in at five or six pounds.

  Every year, five million amateur camera enthusiasts leave home without one. My husband is not one of them.

  For eight years he has dragged that tripod along on our vacation. He has yet to use it. So what good is it, you ask? For starters, it smashes down my dresses so that whatever I wear to dinner, someone will look at the permanent indentation and remark, “Oh, I see you own a tripod.”

  When you run your suitcase through security, bells will chime, buzzers will beep and you have to ask them when was the last time Great Britain was attacked by tripods.