Quote

Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.

Erma Bombeck

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Erma Bombeck
Age: 69 †
Born: 1927
Born: February 21
Died: 1996
Died: April 22
Column Author
Journalist
Writer
Bellbrook
Ohio
Erma Louise Bombeck
Times
Risk
Mother
Parent
School
Hurt
Home
Alone
Summertime
Children
Child
Thirteen
Work
High
Occupation
Call
Hour
Hours
Summer

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I love my mother for all the times she said absolutely nothing.... Thinking back on it all, it must have been the most difficult part of mothering she ever had to do: knowing the outcome, yet feeling she had no right to keep me from charting my own path. I thank her for all her virtues, but mostly for never once having said, I told you so.
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It's [motherhood] the biggest on-the-job- training program in existence today.
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It is ludicrous to read the microwave direction on the boxes of food you buy, as each one will have a disclaimer: THIS WILL VARY WITH YOUR MICROWAVE. Loosely translated, this means, You're on your own, Bernice.
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I didn't fear old age. I was just becoming increasingly aware of the fact that the only people who said old age was beautiful were usually twenty-three years old.
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Encourage independence in your children by regularly losing them in the supermarket.
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Explain to me how he [her son] can ride a bicycle, run, play ball, set up a camp, swing, fight a war, swim and race for eight hours ... and has to be driven to the garbage can.
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You show me a boy who brings a snake home to his mother and I'll show you an orphan.
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You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren't dying. They're merging into big conglomerates.
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The fact that Americans drag around the world by the busloads to glimpse the past probably has something to do with the youth of our country. We revere anything older than George Burns.
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When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten.
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The hippopotamus is a vegetarian and looks like a wall. Lions who eat only red meat are sleek and slim. Are nutritionists on the wrong track?
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Never order food in excess of your body weight.
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A friend doesn't go on a diet because you are fat. A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday. A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend -- and he's a priest.
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There is so much to teach, and the time goes so fast.
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With boys you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane. It's all there. The fruit flies hovering over their waste can, the hamster trying to escape to cleaner air, the bedrooms decorated in Early Bus Station Restroom.
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I have a friend who lives by a three-word philosophy: Seize the Moment. Just possibly, she may be the wisest woman on this planet.
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Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.
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Throughout the years I have set up my own rules about eating food: Never eat anything you can't pronounce. Beware of food that is described as, Some Americans say it tastes like chicken.
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The art of never making a mistake is crucial to motherhood. To be effective and to gain the respect she needs to function, a mother must have her children believe she has never engaged in sex, never made a bad decision, never caused her own mother a moment's anxiety, and was never a child.
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Giving birth is little more than a set of muscular contractions granting passage of a child. Then the mother is born.
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