Quote

Adults can take a simple holiday for Children and screw it up. What began as a presentation of simple gifts to delight and surprise children around the Christmas tree has culminated in a woman unwrapping six shrimp forks from her dog, who drew her name.

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
Adults
Presentation
Take
Dog
Holiday
Children
Tree
Gifts
Culminated
Name
Christmas
Shrimp
Names
Began
Forks
Six
Screw
Simple
Delight
Drew
Woman
Surprise
Screws
Around

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My sister and I never engaged in sibling rivalry. Our parents weren't that crazy about either one of us.
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There was a time when the respect and trust my children had for me would have made you sick to your stomach. They believed I could blow on a red traffic light and turn it green.
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Housework, if it is done properly, can cause brain damage.
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Early in my life I had made a pact with myself. I would never eat anything that moved when I cooked it, excited the dog, or inflated upon impact with my teeth.
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I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.
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Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen Three. It takes one to say What light and two more to say I didn't turn it on.
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Family life got better and we got our car back - as soon as we put 'I love Mom' on the license plate.
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I will never understand children. I never pretended to. I meet mothers all the time who make resolutions to themselves. 'I'm going to ... go out of my way to show them I am interested in them and what they do. I am going to understand my children.' These women end up making rag rugs, using blunt scissors.
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To my way of thinking, the American family started to decline when parents began to communicate with their children.
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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 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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There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.
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Parenting is a negative thing. Keep your children from killing themselves, or anyone else, and hope for the best.
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When they told me I needed a mastectomy, I thought of the thousands of luncheons and dinners I had attended where they slapped a name tag on my left bosom. I always smiled and said, 'Now, what shall we name the other one?' That would no longer be a problem.
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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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Those magazine dieting stories always have the testimonial of a woman who wore a dress that could slipcover New Jersey in one photo and thirty days later looked like a well-dressed thermometer.
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It was a bitter moment for us. We weren't two mature parents. We were just two kids playing grown-up. We still needed Mommy and Daddy's permission, blessings, and money to survive.
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Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated.
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One son appears in stereo - a transistor in one ear and the phone in the other.
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I do not participate in any sport with ambulances at the bottom of the hill.
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