Forever, Erma

by Erma Bombeck

  When you suggest to someone that your automobile reparks itself when you’re in the supermarket, he looks at you as though you’ve just told Phil Donahue an alien from a UFO impregnated you with twins.

  But it happens. The part about the restless car, that is.

  The first 20 minutes when I wander hopelessly up and down three lanes with a carry-out boy who is maturing before my eyes, I want to turn to him and announce, Someone stole my car.

  But I’ve done that before, and you get a reputation. (When I said that, and after we finally stumbled onto it, the carry-out boy snorted, “So this is the car you thought someone wanted to steal?”)

  There was a time when I thought I was the only one who parked my car in a spot, made note of where I left it and proceeded to shop. But I was wrong.

  Shoppers who try to find their lost cars all have a way of dealing with it.

  The mumblers are the ones pushing their own carts and carrying on a conversation with themselves. “It has to be here. I remember I was going against the one-way arrow and had to take up two spaces, and the sun was coming in my windshield, so I had to be facing east.”

  The fakers are the people who pretend they know where their car is. They walk in and out of the rows, confidently pushing their carts to the end of each lane. They remain cool.

  When they finally spot it in another lot, they whisper, “You little imp. Mother doesn’t like it when you play games with her—especially when her ice cream is melting.”

  The climbers don’t mess around. They shinny up the nearest pole or climb atop a van and scope the entire area. When they spot their car, they pursue on foot, only to find it has moved again.

  No one has ever actually seen a driverless car finding a new spot in the parking lot. Well, I’ve never seen Elvis at Wal-Mart, but I know he’s there.

  One rainy afternoon in one of those spiral parking garages that has the lighting of a mortuary, a car drove past me in the darkness. You can say the driver was picking something up off the floor, but I say some poor woman who left her car on E Level, Green Concourse, in Slot 27 will go nuts trying to find it.

  The Catchall Drawer

  Talent—June 6, 1966

  THE SERMON TODAY IS talent. It is dedicated to the woman who believes that when talent was passed out, she was on her knees scraping no-crumble cookies out of the carpet.

  When I was five I thought talent was winning $3 for singing the “The Music Goes Round and Round.” When I was 15, I was sure it was Dorothy Thompson covering a war. When I was 25, I knew it had to be anything that wasn’t sticky and didn’t smell like formula, and I didn’t care so much what it was but what it wasn’t.

  I knew it wasn’t setting three clean children out on the curb five days a week. It wasn’t breaking out in a rash because you baked the best chocolate cupcakes on your block. And I hope there was more to it than being able to bring an African violet to full bloom.

  Occasionally, when I was gagged by routine, had little outside stimulation and took an overdose of self-pity pills, I would suffer a self-confidence breakdown. I couldn’t be like the optimist who was given a barnful of fertilizer for a present and ran happily through it, shouting, “I know there’s a pony here somewhere!” No, I wanted a talent you could immortalize in cement.

  It occurred to me I didn’t know what to look for, so I began to isolate the talents I most admired in my friends. Oddly enough, they weren’t the flashy, glamorous skills at all that are usually associated with talent.

  I envied the talent to laugh and regroup your wits when the kids ate the bridge snacks. The self-confidence it takes to walk across a stage and not look back to see if your slip is hanging out. The talent to bear your neighbor’s pain and problems when you’re filled up to the eyeballs with your own.

  The talent of charity when the rest of the room drops the ax on a woman’s reputation and you have the courage to stand up to them alone. The talent of patience it takes to live each same, routine day and add a personal spark to it. The talent it takes to hope and put aside your own personal dreams of achieving until your commitments to everyone else have been fulfilled.

  And the big one, the talent to recognize what you have going for you and to use it to its fullest.

  Someone said talent is measured by the legacies you leave. How many of you will leave rare paintings, great books or moving symphonies? For that matter, how many of you will leave an organization that will proclaim in its minutes that you will be missed...a stranger whom you took under your wing at a PTA meeting who can’t remember your name but who will never forget you...a small twig in the garden that you pointed skyward...a child who has known your love and will pass it on to generations to come?

  Hey, you, scraping cookies out of the carpet. You were there when talent was passed out. He just had to bend down a bit to give it to you. Don’t return it to Him unused.

  Even Charity Has Its Bounds—January 2, 1967

  A note in a church bulletin in Iowa reaffirmed what I have always known—even charity has its bounds.

  It read: “Clothing collection for the needy people of the world. Bring them to school. The clothing must be usable. Not wanted: handbags, girdles, high-heel shoes. Give these to the Salvation Army.”

  I didn’t check with the Salvation Army to see if they were so crazy for them either, but I did check with a missionary in a native village called Pwatanya to see what effect some of our western apparel has on primitive people.

  “Actually,” said the white-haired missionary, “handbags are quite sought after. The men prop them open with sticks and use them as traps for small animals. It’s not uncommon to see the men with four or five handbags slung over their shoulders, looking much I suppose like your western women after they’ve emerged victorious from an end-of-the-month clearance.

  “The high-heeled shoes were a curious item at first. The natives tried sticking them through their noses as ornaments. Then they figured out, by attaching them to long poles, they made very good spears.

  “Finally (remember, we’re quite primitive here), someone suggested putting them on the feet of those being punished for some crime and have them actually walk around the compound in them. Our crime rate has diminished drastically.

  “As for the personal apparel, some of it is quite perplexing to receive. Not long ago, we received an item that was labeled a Living Bra. Not having any instructions, we tried feeding it a thick broth called Lumba, and Pongow, a sort of a bread meal, but the poor thing must have died en route. It’s a pity.

  “We never really found out what it was supposed to do. We gave it a Christian burial.

  “As for girdles, we did have a few Liberty magazines that some church sent to keep us current, and there were ads in there showing these garments being worn about the middle. A few of our men tried them on, were immediately gouged and threw them off shouting, ‘Evil spirits!’

  “For months, the natives shunned them. Then one day a small child kicked at one and a stay flipped out and hit him in the eye. Natives are strange people. They rationalized it was punishing the child for disobeying its parent in going near it in the first place. The girdle received status. It was restored, propped up in a bamboo chair, garnished with palm leaves and today is head of the tribe.”

  Moral of the story: Be kind to your girdle. It may be someone’s leader.

  Time—November 17, 1971

  Time.

  It hangs heavy for the bored, eludes the busy, flies by for the young and runs out for the aged.

  Time. We talk about it like it’s a manufactured commodity that some can afford, others can’t, some can reproduce, others waste.

  We crave it. We curse it. We kill it. We abuse it.

  Is it a friend? Or an enemy?

  I suspect we know very little about it. To know it at all and its potential, perhaps we should view it through a child’s eyes.

  • “When I was young, Daddy was going to throw me up in the air and catch me and I would giggle until I couldn’t
giggle anymore, but he had to change the furnace filter, and there wasn’t time.”

  • “When I was young, Mama was going to read me a story and I was going to turn the pages and pretend I could read, but she had to wax the bathroom, and there wasn’t time.”

  • “When I was young, Daddy was going to come to school and watch me in a play. I was the fourth wise man (in case one of the three got sick), but he had an appointment to have his car tuned up and it took longer than he thought, and there wasn’t time.”

  • “When I was young, Mama was going to listen to me read my essay on ‘What I Want to Be When I Grow Up,’ but she was in the middle of the Monday night movie and Gregory Peck was always one of her favorites, and there wasn’t time.”

  • “When I was older, Dad and I were going fishing one weekend, just the two of us, and we were going to pitch a tent and fry fish with the heads on them like they do in the flashlight ads, but at the last minute he had to fertilize the grass, and there wasn’t time.”

  • “When I was older, the whole family was always going to pose together for our Christmas card, but my brother had ball practice, my sister had her hair up, Dad was watching the Colts and Mom had to wax the bathroom, and there wasn’t time.”

  • “When I grew up and left home to be married, I was going to sit down with Mom and Dad and tell them I loved them and I would miss them. But Hank (he was my best man and a real clown) was honking the horn in front of the house, so there wasn’t time.”

  Women Are Financial Giants—February 19, 1980

  Women have known for years that they are the financial giants of this country. They regulate the economy control the purchasing power and establish guidelines for spending.

  You want to know how we know it? Because someone told us.

  If I seem underwhelmed about the distinction, it’s because I just broke my own record for writing the smallest check ever recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records—seven cents. This marvel occurred at one of those self-service gas stations. In trying to force a leaded nozzle into an unleaded gas tank, I inadvertently spilled a little gasoline on my shoe.

  Realizing my error, I quickly changed to the unleaded nozzle and got exactly what I had cash for—$6.32. When I went to pay the girl behind the glass she said, “You owe seven cents on pump No. 34.”

  I said, “I didn’t put that gas in my car.”

  She looked up tiredly and asked, “What did you do with it?”

  “I poured it on my foot.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I meant to pour the unleaded.”

  “On your foot?”

  “In the car.”

  “That’ll be seven cents.”

  I whipped out my charge card.

  “You want to charge seven cents?”

  “Of course not,” I snapped. “I also want to get a windshield wiper, a whoopee cushion for the front seat and a traffic-light dog that lights up for my rearview window when I hit the brakes.”

  “We only sell gas. Besides, we don’t take credit cards. That’ll be seven cents cash.”

  “I have tons of money at home,” I said.

  She looked at me, and I realized I was not exactly dressed for success. “Then I’ll write you a check,” I said.

  Seconds later, I ripped it out of the checkbook and gave it to her (with two IDs), and she said, “Aren’t you going to record it?”

  My cheeks burned with humiliation as I jotted it down. I said, “Did you know that women control 85 percent of the nation’s wealth and that if we ever quit buying this nation would come to its knees by noon?”

  She snapped her gum. “It must be lonely at the top.”

  Junk Drawers—January 17, 1984

  The organized people of this world, all six of them, who insist that everything has a place are really out of it!

  Everything does not have a place, which is precisely why catchall or junk drawers are born. They are as vital a part of the American scene as electricity or indoor plumbing.

  They are like compost heaps: The older and the higher they are, the better and richer they become.

  I entered marriage quite deprived. I not only did not have a button box, I did not even have the makings of a decent catchall drawer. Within six months, I had one of the finest in the neighborhood. The secret?

  First, you start with a large drawer, usually in the kitchen, in which a bottle of glue or nail polish has spilled in the bottom. This is what makes the expired coupons and old rubber bands stick together, making a firm bed for the rest of the junk you are going to add.

  Near the back should be the things you need the most: a hammer, screwdriver, ice scraper for removing snow from the car windows, chewing gum, new fuses, appliance warranties and emergency phone numbers.

  I like to store hibachi sticks and a broken ruler so that every time the drawer is opened they catch, and you can’t open the drawer anymore, nor can you close it.

  Toward the front are the floating candlewicks, floral wire, a half deck of cards, a box of sparklers and a spool of chartreuse thread with a needle that draws blood every time you open the drawer.

  Catchall drawers must be maintained. That means every time you go by one, you must open it and shove something in: an old cork, a knotted shoelace, a cat caller, a packet of airline almonds, an unidentified key or a death notice of someone you do not know. It all adds to the mystery.

  Catchall drawers are not confined to the home. One of the best monuments to clutter I ever saw in my life was the middle desk drawer of a schoolteacher. When she finally got it opened, it was like an active volcano. Everything in it was restless and moved slowly and rhythmically. She threw in a used corn pad, slammed the drawer shut quickly and said, “You have to keep feeding it.”

  Mousetraps are overrated for getting people to beat a path to your door. If you have a good catchall drawer, you can write your own ticket.

  Box Savers—December 20, 1984

  This is the time of year when the box savers of the world have their finest hour.

  You know who they are. They’re the ones who squirrel away every box and carton they ever receive and bestow the gift of immortality upon it.

  There is something arrogant about people who save boxes. They remind me of the sanctimonious people who always have their ticket and the right change at the parking garage, or whose car is always in gear when the traffic light changes.

  The carton queen in our family is my mother. There is nothing you can name that she does not have an empty box for. Want to wrap a piano? Go to Mother’s. Want to surprise someone with a load of firewood? Mother has the carton for it. Buying a goalpost for your grandson? Mother can wrap it.

  Box savers are not only arrogant about their habit, they are downright evangelistic. I remember the first time I gave my mother a pair of earrings wrapped in a rectal thermometer box. I thought she’d be choked up that I found a box with cotton. Instead, she gave me the God-knows-I-did-the-best-I-could look and said, “Why didn’t you come to me for a box?”

  I’ve watched her at birthday celebrations and Christmases. She is like a minesweeper. No sooner is the paper off the present than she is winding the ribbon around her fingers and smoothing the creases out of the wrapping paper. As soon as the recipient holds the gift up for everyone to see, the box disappears to be recycled. It will appear again for the next 35 years...somewhere...holding something.

  This week when I discovered a jogging suit would not fit into a shoe box, I did something I do not take lightly. I went to Mother’s for a box.

  She flipped on the light in her closet, and I thought, If Tutankhamen’s mother had a tomb, this would have been it. I had never seen such a box glut. There were boxes in boxes, boxes for folding chairs, lampshades, tubes for posters and cartons for mattresses. There were boxes singed with black where she had pulled them from the fire.

  She turned to me. “What are you putting in this box? Where are you sending it? How much did the item cost? Is there a
chance you can get it back after it’s used? How important is it to you?”

  “I’m not adopting it, Mother, I’m only borrowing it.”

  “You’re the one who makes fun of me every year for saving boxes, aren’t you, missy?”

  “That’s true, Mother, but you know what a rotten person I am.”

  “You don’t treat boxes nicely. I saw you jam an afghan in one one year, and it broke down the sides.”

  “Mother! I’m begging!”

  She handed me a box off the shelf. “Tell me what time it is to be opened, and I’ll be there.”

  I’m-Not-Going Syndrome—October 28, 1986

  I’m at the age of my life where every time I buy something of any value, I have visions of my kids marking it down to $2 at a garage sale. I don’t know if that kind of anxiety has a name or not, but for the sake of reference I’ll call it the “I’m-Not-Going Syndrome.”

  Sometimes I wake up at night in a cold sweat just thinking that my cup and saucer collection will fall into the hands of someone furnishing a summer cabin who doesn’t mind dishes that don’t match. A friend who is older and wiser than I suggested I start early to find homes for all my treasures and not leave my legacies to chance.

  I got out my 17-year-old mink stole the other day and came to a decision. I was going to spread joy while I was still alive to see the excitement on the face of my daughter when I gave it to her. When she came to dinner, I unzipped the plastic garment bag and said, “Do you know what this is?”

  She put on her glasses and came in for a closer look. “Help me,” she said.

  “Christmas. Severely depressed. Family. Daddy. Surprise.”

  She shook her head excitedly. “Daddy killed this and we ate it for Christmas dinner.”

  “It was my first mink coat,” I said. “And it’s yours.”

  I placed it around her shoulders. She was speechless.