Erma Bombeck Warned Us

We are all Erma Bombeck now.  I was perusing the Pinterest pins and surfed over to a site containing Erma Bombeck quotes when I realized that at least half of the bloggers I read are following in the ink stained trail of Erma’s wit and wisdom.    But then I’ve always thought Erma was far more political and downright cagey than she was ever given credit for being. 

Some of the best quotes of hers from the page on women’s history on about.com:

• When mothers talk about the depression of the empty nest, they’re not mourning the passing of all those wet towels on the floor, or the music that numbs your teeth, or even the bottle of capless shampoo dribbling down the shower drain. They’re upset because they’ve gone from supervisor of a child’s life to a spectator. It’s like being the vice president of the United States.

• It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding. 

• Graduation day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After twenty-two years of child-rearing, they are unemployed.

But I think my favorite one is this one:

• We’ve got a generation now who were born with semiequality. They don’t know how it was before, so they think, this isn’t too bad. We’re working. We have our attaché cases and our three-piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don’t realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle.

What, oh what, wisdom would Erma have for us in these days when men with severe and degenerative cases of ’50s-ism? (def: mental illness in which an illogical and irrational desire to return to a non-existent time period during which June Cleaver and Donna Reed existed and roamed the Earth).   Pssst.  Wake up!  I think right now is the “worse” she was talking about! 

So what are you going to do for International Women’s Day this year?  I think we should all do something.  Ideas?  Oh, International Women’s Day is March 8th.