Free Family - The Ties That Bind...And Gag! by Erma Bombeck

self-respecting family would think of going on a vacation without the “Seat Kicker.” The Seat Kicker is a forerunner of the bionic leg. He positions himself just behind Daddy's seat and has been clocked at 200 kicks per minute for as long as 400 miles. The motion affects his hearing.
    And not to be missed is the child we call the “Hysteria Connection.” You have just turned onto the freeway when she leans over to where Daddy is smiling in anticipation of a week without pressure and says, “Did you mean to leave the garden hose running, Daddy?” Daddy will not smile again on the trip.
    She hears a strange knock in the engine that was the same knock her friend, Robin, heard just before the transmission went out of their car. She hears a newscast issuing tornado warnings for the place you are headed. She notes that the farther you go, the higher the price of gasoline gets, and her asthma seems to be getting worse and she probably will not be able to breathe in the cabin you have rented.
    Occasionally, she turns to her brother and asks, “Did you tell Mom about the cat you have hiding under your bed?” or to her sister, “Everyone who's been accepted to State next fall has been notified by now.”
    She hears sirens before anyone else in the car and smells burning rubber. She reassures her mother that the Ryans' dog had a hysterectomy and she got fat, too!
    And just when you think the Hysteria Connection has dispensed all the good news a family can stand on a vacation, she says, “I didn't want to mention it, but when Daddy was hiding the key under the flowerpot by the door, I saw a man watching him from a parked car across the street.” Then she adds cheerfully, “I wouldn't worry. I've been exposed to measles and if I'm on schedule, the rash should appear tonight and we should all be coming home tomorrow.”
    All of this makes you wonder why you cleaned out the fireplace, sucked the dust out from under the freezer, glued the tile down in the bathroom, fluffed up all the pillows, bought new underwear for the entire family, and ate three black bananas before the house-sitter came. Maybe to give your kids something “interesting” to remember.
     
    THE IDES OF MAY
    Friday: 9 p.m.
    Throughout the years it has come to be known simply as the “closet experience.”
    Kids haven't been home unless they've pawed through their old sports trophies and ribbons, 2,080 friendship pictures from grade school, rubber worms, dolls with no eyes, graduation tassels, rugs from Disneyland, pennants, report cards, sand-filled cameras, basketballs, kites, dog-eared letters, college catalogs, and license plates.
    It was a monument to another myth. As parents, we had always been led to believe that you didn't lose a daughter or a son to an apartment... you gained a closet. When our children were younger, sometimes my husband and I would sneak into their bedrooms as they slept. We would gaze into their closets as I squeezed his hand and smiled, “Just think, Dear ... one day all of that will be yours.” We fantasized about the time each of us would have a rod of our own for our clothes ... a shelf without Christmas decorations ... floor space without boxes marked RAIN-SOAKED HALLOWEEN MASKS AND LUCKY GYM SHOES.
    It never happened. Their apartments were too small to liold their treasures so they stored them at home and visited them with some regularity.
    “What are you digging for?” I asked, wading through a room of boxes and old tennis rackets without strings.
    “God Mom, you didn’t throw away my baseball cards, did you? They're worth a fortune. Do you have any idea what you can get for a Pete Rose with a burr haircut?”
    “She threw away a box of my albums which would have been classics and snatched up by Sotheby's,” said his brother.
    “You don't know that,” I said.
    “Mom! The lyrics were clean!”
    “All I know is I'm sick of saving all this mess. I feel like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, watching the mice nip