Conference moira::parenting_v3

79.0. "Erma Bombeck" by TOOK::C_SANDSTROM (born of the stars) Wed Jun 27 1990 16:12

    I read this in yesterday's paper and thought the rest of you would
    appreciate it as well.  Mods, if this is inappropriate, please delete.
    
    Conni                                                                 
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	Kids See the Many Faces of Mother

	Erma Bombeck, Tuesday, 26-Jun-1990 (w/o permission)


		Often when interviewed, I'm asked what kind of 
	mother I am.  That's a lot like asking me to make up my 
	own test and grade it myself.

		Who knows?  I showed up for it.  I worked a lot 
	of overtime.  Had a lot of help from Drs. Spock, Denton 
	and Ruth.  Not one of my kids is working on a "Mommie" book. 
	(Only one has an agent.)

		I suspect that if you talked with each of the three 
	you would get a different answer because I was three different 
	people.  No one got the same mother. 

		Child No. 1 got the Antiseptic Queen, a thin, nervous 
	woman endowed with patience and dedicated to staying at home 
	boiling things all day long, as if she were living through a 
	typhoid epidemic.  She boiled pacifiers, toys and diapers, 
	recorded the baby's BMs, and took pictures every four days 
	for the baby album.

		She hand-smocked little dresses, served homemade baby 
	food in a warmer dish with little ducks floating around the 
	rim, and actually needle-pointed a 4-by-6 rug of a sailboat 
	for the nursery.

		Child No. 2 got Super Sufferer, who had stretch marks 
	on her face from over-eating and dragged around in her husband's 
	shirts.  She couldn't get a meal together until 7 and fell 
	asleep during a root canal.  With regularity, she flunked the 
	wife/mother quizzes in magazines.

		She told her children the tooth fairy resorted to 
	checks because the IRS needed proof of the deductions.  Apathy 
	reigned.  The baby food included a hot dog on a paper plate.   
	The musical potty seat played The Impossible Dream, and she 
	once rescued the pacifier from the coffee grounds and rinsed 
	it with the garden hose before sticking it back in baby's mouth.

		Child No. 3 got Mother Mellow, who didn't much care 
	what he did just so long as he had clean hands and his own 
	door key.  Birth and graduation pictures were on the same film.  
	The sailboat rug faded when it was washed and was now used for 
	a dog bed.  She was a woman with no nervous system even when 
	the baby bit into a tube of paint tint and urinated blue for 
	a week. 

		This mother actually revealed a sense of humor and 
	admitted to mistakes from time to time.

		Small wonder kiss-and-tell books are written by the 
	firstborn.

    Erma brightened my day.  Thanks for taking the time to type it in.
    
    Chris