EXHIBITIONISTS ARE BORN THAT WAY

EXHIBITIONISTS ARE BORN THAT WAY. He's the baby in his crib who cries like he has just swallowed a razor blade, and when you pick him up he immediately stops.





He's the child who, in every home video, sails across the screen in front of everybody like a blurred Frisbee out of control. At the dinner table he will hang a french fry from each nostril and bark like a seal. He pees in the wading pool, clearing it out in 10 seconds flat. He wears his clothes inside out to school and lets his underwear hang out of his tennis shorts. He takes your checkbook to show and tell. When he grows up he frequents karaoke bars and sings "Strangers in the Night" off key.







This was written by the Humorous Homemaker herself, Erma Bombeck. And boy, can you tell this woman truly raised her own kids. If you've never read her work, and you're a wife and/or mom, i highly recommend it - she's hilarious, and spot - on. She has passed away now, but wrote several humorous books,, and tons of magazine articles. Check her out. I've a few more samples of her stuff on this blog, and plan to add more later, as well.

PARROT (humor)

(Told by Erma Bombeck)

1. Erma had a parrot. He said 2 things, "Hello Barney" (his name WAS Barney) and "telephone". She bought a tape to help him learn more words. For 20 minutes, twice a day, he'd listen to 2 repetitive phrases, "Hey, I'm over here," and "I'm a bad bird". Then he was supposed to tra-la-la along to 20 minutes of the "Toreador" song. By the end of 3 weeks, she says she was considering making a necklace of Valium and licking it at intervals. The tape was driving her nuts. One evening at the dinner table her husband said, "I'm a bad bird." Then he added, "I have no idea why I said that."
   She gave the bird to her son.
   

Modern medicine has a way of complicating the simplest maladies- short rant by Erma Bombeck

Modern medicine has a way of complicating the simplest malady. No one has a common cold anymore. Its a virus and no one has a cure for it. They only know there's a lot of it going around. The 1st medicine prescribed said if I had heart disease, forget it. If I had diabetes, don't even think about taking it, and if I suffered from hypertension, get rid of it. In other words, I had to be healthy before I could take it.
The nose drops carried a warning saying I couldn't drive to work, which meant I could lose my job or let my nose run.
The pill to control my fever caused constipation, but the one to relieve my congestion might bring on diarrhea. I figured if I took them in tandem they'd cancel each other out.
The cough syrup said I couldn't operate heavy machinery (I interpreted that to mean the vacuum).
A liquid to help me sleep could make me nauseous and give me chills (I already had them).
The vitamin supplement carried this warning, "Could cause genital itching". I certainly want a refill on that one.
Hanging onto my cold seemed like my best shot.
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AN ALTERNATIVE TO MODERN-DAY MEDICINE
(Also known as the Robin Leach get-well-or-die-happy plan)
The next time you don't feel well, check into a great hotel costing about $150 (to $300 today - its still cheaper than a hospital) a day. The hospital room will run you $500 (that was a decade or more ago - I don't even know what they charge for a room today, but you're lucky to get out with a bill under $10,000 for a stay of more than a couple days).For $150 you get a suite with your own television and bathroom to yourself (probably wi-fi, maybe a jacuzzi, in-room coffee-maker, stocked fridge, etc). The room comes with a continental breakfast and a newspaper, plus a fluffy bathrobe that covers the ENTIRE body. There is valet parking for visitors.
There are deck chairs and a swimming pool, and when you don't eat everything on your plate, nobody cares.
You can read until you fall asleep and nobody wakes you up in the middle of the night out of a sound slumber to take your vital signs and give you a sleeping pill.
If you have a burning desire to see a doctor, there is a putting green nearby where you can meet and maybe have something cold to drink while you tell him what Reader's Digest (and/or the Internet) says about your condition. The biggest plus is that there are no forms to fill out for the rest of your life.
Not convinced? What if I told you that for the price of an ambulance ride, you could fly first-class to London?

JOKES AND QUOTES BY ERMA BOMBECK (ms erma actually had "I told you I was sick" engraved on her tombstone-a joker til the end, and past it)

(If you don't know Erma, moms and wives will get her humor best. Tho some of her stuff can be appreciated by men, she wrote of her life and experiences as a wife and mother. She has several books, guested on many day-time shows, did short articles for newspapers and magazines. What I have here really doesn't represent her that well. These are short exerpts from several stories and such. Her best work was in the form of short stories, which, as it turns out, are longer than they seem when you're actually copying them out. Best leave that to her books and just copy these paragraphs and one liners for my pitimous little blog.
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Women are giving birth much later in life nowadays. A 54 yr old woman in Great Britain was artificially inseminated and gave birth to twins. This trend can't go much further. Having a delivery covered by Medicare just isn't going to fly. It's too risky for a woman to put down a baby and not remember where she left it.
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Are people really smarter than animals? Which is worse, the opossum who produces up to 50 babies yet has only 13 teats, or the human female who gives birth to 3 offspring and has only 2 windows in the back seat of her car?
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The hippopotamus is a vegetarian and looks like a wall. Lions who eat only red meat are sleek and slim. Could human nutritionalists be on the wrong track?
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There is no species on the face of the earth that prides itself more on its ability to get around than men. Yet most of them are lost their entire lifetimes. They just won't admit it.
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At my age, patience is not a virtue - it's a luxury.
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(This one isn't a joke, but is a tale that was part of one of her stories. I thought it was terribly cute, tho I have no idea if she tells it as a fact or something she heard, or made up.)
In 1939, a Coast Guard vessel was cruising the Canadian Arctic when the men spotted a polar bear on an ice floe. What a novelty for the seamen, who threw it salami, peanut butter, and chocolate bars. Then they ran out of food. The bear had not run out of appetite, so he proceeded to board the vessel. The men were terrified so they opened the fire hoses on him. The polar bear loved it and raised his paws in the air to get the water under his armpits. Eventually, he was forced to return to his ice pad. (Note to anyone who thinks polar bears are cute and fuzzy - they're also gigantic and fierce. Not exactly the type of animal you want as a pet, or even wanna get anywhere close to.)
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There are certain things a woman cannot do with dirty hair. She cannot give birth, be married, drop off a child in public, stay at the scene of an accident, or answer the phone with her husband's old girlfriend on the other end of the line. One of the first appointments a new widow makes is with her hairdresser. (Back in the days when women went at least once a week to have hair styled and set, like a helmet, and spent the next week wrapped in scarves and such to prevent messing it up. I dunno how they slept.) She may look like roadkill at the funeral, but every hair is in place and sprayed to stay there until the end of the century.
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