Read Online Family - The Ties That Bind...And Gag! by Erma Bombeck - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Erma Bombeck
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same time, 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; there was no need to speak. Finally I whispered, “Courage, Sister!” I think of her often.
I wondered if she married a man who regarded asking for directions anywhere as a genetic weakness. I wish I had a dime for eveiy cloverleaf we circled for eight days. “Dear,” I'd suggest, “why don't you ask directions from someone?”
“Because I am not lost,” he would say. “That's the difference between men and women. Women don't like to figure things out. As soon as they see a cow in a field they panic and right away start asking directions.”
It was only the first of many trips where we wandered aimlessly about the countryside, too lost to last... and too proud to ask.
We explored every dead-end road in the United States, blazed trails where only covered wagons had been, and discovered maternity homes for bloodsucking mosquitoes.
I wondered if she too married a man with kidneys the size of basketballs who never felt the need for a bladder stop. Whenever I broached the subject, I was always told, “You're bored. You need something to do. Why don't you figure out where we are?”
In truth, I stopped reading road maps in 1977 when my husband accused me of moving the Mississippi River over two states.
It wasn't the first time he yelled at me for tampering with locations. We once quarreled over whether a prominent arch was a McDonald's or the gateway to St. Louis. Another time we had an ugly scene when I wrapped my gum in the Great Lakes and we couldn't find our way to the Canadian border.
Reading road maps is like being a vice president. You wear navy and keep your mouth shut. The only time you are consulted is when the driver is approaching a fork in the road at 55 mph and shouts, “OK, you wanted to drive ... now which way do we turn?”
It's funny, but the anatomy of our life together can be summed up in the road map experience.
The first year of our marriage, I told my husband I got nauseated when I read in a moving car and he laughed and said, “Sweetheart, I don't want you to do anything but just sit there and talk to me. Just leavc the driving to me.”
A few years later, when we had three children fighting over two car windows, he started to delegate things for me to do. One was to “keep those kids from killing one another.”
A few years later, he added, “Entertain them or give them a sedative.”
Then one day he said, “Start looking for the tumoff.” When I said I didn't know what turnoff he was talking about, he said, “Look in the glove compartment for the map. It's marked.”
“You know I get nauseated when I read in a moving car,” I said.
For the next ten years, I was never to see another monument, scenic wonder, Stuckey's, cathedral, sunset, or spacious sky. I sat for hours hunched over a mural of wavy lines, little circles, numbers too small to read, and distances too long to care.
I was to discover road maps made people say things they did not mean.
“We missed Fort Lauderdale. That's what I'd expect from a woman whose mother swims out to meet troop ships.”
“Oh sure, I'll get in the left lane ... when you get out of the sack in the morning and make my breakfast, I'll get in the left lane.”
“So which way do I go, Erma? Left or right? I'll give you a hint. You pat the dog with your left hand. You dry your fingernails out of the car window with your right.”
It's been ten years since I stuffed a road map up his nose. Ten years of riding in silence. That is not to say there is peace in the back seat of the car. Children do not go on a vacation to have a good time. If parents really wanted them to have a good time, they would leave them at home. Each rebels in his or her own way.
No
I wondered if she married a man who regarded asking for directions anywhere as a genetic weakness. I wish I had a dime for eveiy cloverleaf we circled for eight days. “Dear,” I'd suggest, “why don't you ask directions from someone?”
“Because I am not lost,” he would say. “That's the difference between men and women. Women don't like to figure things out. As soon as they see a cow in a field they panic and right away start asking directions.”
It was only the first of many trips where we wandered aimlessly about the countryside, too lost to last... and too proud to ask.
We explored every dead-end road in the United States, blazed trails where only covered wagons had been, and discovered maternity homes for bloodsucking mosquitoes.
I wondered if she too married a man with kidneys the size of basketballs who never felt the need for a bladder stop. Whenever I broached the subject, I was always told, “You're bored. You need something to do. Why don't you figure out where we are?”
In truth, I stopped reading road maps in 1977 when my husband accused me of moving the Mississippi River over two states.
It wasn't the first time he yelled at me for tampering with locations. We once quarreled over whether a prominent arch was a McDonald's or the gateway to St. Louis. Another time we had an ugly scene when I wrapped my gum in the Great Lakes and we couldn't find our way to the Canadian border.
Reading road maps is like being a vice president. You wear navy and keep your mouth shut. The only time you are consulted is when the driver is approaching a fork in the road at 55 mph and shouts, “OK, you wanted to drive ... now which way do we turn?”
It's funny, but the anatomy of our life together can be summed up in the road map experience.
The first year of our marriage, I told my husband I got nauseated when I read in a moving car and he laughed and said, “Sweetheart, I don't want you to do anything but just sit there and talk to me. Just leavc the driving to me.”
A few years later, when we had three children fighting over two car windows, he started to delegate things for me to do. One was to “keep those kids from killing one another.”
A few years later, he added, “Entertain them or give them a sedative.”
Then one day he said, “Start looking for the tumoff.” When I said I didn't know what turnoff he was talking about, he said, “Look in the glove compartment for the map. It's marked.”
“You know I get nauseated when I read in a moving car,” I said.
For the next ten years, I was never to see another monument, scenic wonder, Stuckey's, cathedral, sunset, or spacious sky. I sat for hours hunched over a mural of wavy lines, little circles, numbers too small to read, and distances too long to care.
I was to discover road maps made people say things they did not mean.
“We missed Fort Lauderdale. That's what I'd expect from a woman whose mother swims out to meet troop ships.”
“Oh sure, I'll get in the left lane ... when you get out of the sack in the morning and make my breakfast, I'll get in the left lane.”
“So which way do I go, Erma? Left or right? I'll give you a hint. You pat the dog with your left hand. You dry your fingernails out of the car window with your right.”
It's been ten years since I stuffed a road map up his nose. Ten years of riding in silence. That is not to say there is peace in the back seat of the car. Children do not go on a vacation to have a good time. If parents really wanted them to have a good time, they would leave them at home. Each rebels in his or her own way.
No
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