Free If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? by Erma Bombeck Page A

even care.
     
    Truth in Fair Packaging of Children
     
    We do a lot of talking in this country about “fair packaging.” People like to know what they are getting before they get stuck with it.
    I do a lot of thinking about how I am going to merchandise my kids. Frankly, in clear conscience, I don't see how I can let them go into marriage without slapping a sticker on their foreheads that reads: “This Person May Be Injurious to Your Mental Health.”
    I have visions of some poor bride coming to me in tears and saying, “You tricked me. Why didn't you tell me your son doesn't know how to close a door after himself???”
    It will only be a matter of time before she discovers he is lacking in other basic skills and I will feel guilty. For example, my son does not know how to wring out a washcloth. I have held washcloth seminars in which I have demonstrated the twist-wrist action. He still insists on dropping it sopping full of water wherever he happens to be standing.
    He cannot fold a newspaper after he has read it, hear a phone ring unless it is for him, put a cap on a bottle or tube, or carry on a conversation unless his mouth is full.
    He hangs his clothes on a chair, has a three-months' supply of snacks hidden in his desk drawer and makes his bed by smoothing it over with a coat hanger.
    Unless he changes drastically, he will be impossible to live with. He insists on having his own window in the car, calling seconds on the meat before he sits down at the table, and once confessed to a friend he does not brush his teeth until school starts in September.
    No, I would be a traitor to my own sex if I did not put a tag around this child's neck reading: Boy. Eleven years old. Made in U.S.A. Height, 4'8", net weight (including package) seventy-six pounds. Natural coloring, blond in summer, washed out in winter.
    Capacity: Eight meals a day. Contains thirty-five hundred calories at all times. Artificially sweetened.
    Unaffected by sun, rain and mud. Standard ingredients: 80 percent charm, 10 percent gold-bricking and 1 percent energy.
    Read label carefully. Take eleven-year-old boy with tongue-in-cheek, grain of salt, and a frequent checkup.
     
    Constitutionality of Drive-in Windows
     
    It's just my own personal observation, but I don't think God ever meant for man to do his banking, order food, or mail a letter from the driver's seat of the car.
    I have noted only two cars that have swung precariously up to the position where they can comfortably do business. One was a car from a demolition derby and the other was a rental. Neither had anything to lose.
    Drive-in banks intimidate me the most, possibly because I am “on camera” and quite self-conscious about having the tellers gather and exclaim, "Watch this one, Dorothy. She's the one who fell apart when her fender was ripped off last week."
    Consequently, I have become something of a conservative. I pull in a good six feet from the window and when the drawer slides out I find that by opening my car door and forcing my head through my shoulder seat belt, pushing on the brake pedal with my right foot and bending my knee against the gearshift for leverage, I can slide my deposit slip into the drawer providing (a) I discontinue breathing for a while and (b) there are no high winds to circulate my deposit slip in the parking lot.
    The mailboxes are something else. I never pull up to one of them that I don't visualize a meeting of the postal department in Washington figuring out how to position the boxes.
    “No, no, Chester,” says the designer. “You have placed the boxes on the driver's side of the car. We mustn't pamper them. Put them on the passenger side so the driver will have to put the car in park, straddle the stick shift in the console, cup his throat over the window and just try to sail the letter into this six-inch slot.”
    “Then the slot should be just above the pick-up times that have become blurred and unreadable?” asked Chester.
    “Higher, Chester,