Free I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression by Erma Bombeck Page A

not smiling until they got out of the gates.
    It took them longer to resolve the capital of Missouri than it took to settle the entire territory. They argued about whether or not you could use a yo-yo on the moon. Whether hair would grow over a vaccination. Whether a gorilla if put at a typewriter could eventually produce a best seller. How come some daddies have wrinkles in their necks and others didn’t What size shoe Pete Maravich wore. And if a nun were allowed to become a priest, would you call her Father.
    They threatened to “slap” 55 times, “punch” 33 times, said, “I’m telling” 138 times and whispered, “I’ll give youone” three times. (That sounded ominous and I didn’t turn around.)
    As I sat in the front seat nervously knotting my seat belt into a rosary, I concluded our family would never make a TV series … unless it was “Night Gallery.”
    As I slumped against the door, one of my children yelled, “Hey, Mom, you better push the button down on your door or you’ll fall out.”
    If only I could believe that.
    It does not impress me one bit that every year more than a million families embark on a camping venture.
    I know that of those who make it back (some poor devils wander around for years looking for ranger stations, children, and ice-cube machines) a goodly number are disenchanted. Why you may ask yourself?
    To begin with, few realistic camping guides have been written. Usually, they are small, shiny booklets with waterproof covers (this should tell you something) showing a family in a small, secluded paradise. Daddy is in a trout stream up to his creel in excitement. Mother is waving nearby from a pair of water skis. And the children are gathered around a campfire playing Old Maid with Gentle Ben.
    It never rains on the covers of camping guides. Mother is never shown doing a three-week laundry in a saucepan. Dad is never depicted fixing a flat on a tandem trailer in Mosquito City, with three children dancing around, chanting, “We are going to miss ‘Mod Squad’ and it’s your fault.” It is never revealed that children often sit around for four days at a time crying, “Make him stop looking at me or I am going to bust him one.”
    There are all kinds of camping, of course. There are the primitives who sleep on a blanket of chipmunks under the stars and exist only on wild berries and what game they are able to trap in the zippers of their sleeping bags. There are the tent enthusiasts who use cots, icecoolers, matches, transistor radios and eat store-bought bread, but who draw the line at electricity and indoor plumbing. Finally, there are the wheelsvilles. They run the gamut from the family that converts the old pickup truck to a home on wheels to those who rough it with color TV, guitars, outdoor lounge furniture, flaming patio torches, ice crushers, electric fire lighters, showers, makeup mirrors, hoods over the campfire, plastic logs, Hondas for short trips to the city, and yapping dogs that have had their teeth capped.
    It doesn’t matter how you camp. The point is that a few practical suggestions could keep you from going bananas:
    What to do when it rains. Rearrange canned foods, plan a side trip, write letters home, remembering to lie. Read all the wonderful books you brought and promised yourself to read.
(The Red Badge of Courage
and
The American Journal on Tooth Decay.)
    And rains. Pick grains of sand out of the butter, sit in the car and pretend you’re going home, find out who really has gym shoes that smell like wet possum.
    And rains. Send the kids out to find traffic to play in. Call in friends and watch the clothing mildew. Pair off and find an ark.
    Otherwise camping can be loads of fun. Tips from my woodland log:
How to bed down without hurting yourself or anyone else
.
    1. Don’t kneel on the stove to let the cot down from the wall until all the burners are off.
    2. If the table converts to a bed, make sure it has been cleared.
    3. Whoever brought the