Cherry Pits and Worms

The first week in October marks an annual celebration called Great Books Week. To honor this week, The National Association of
Independent Writers and Editors (NAIWE) is holding the Great Books Week Blog Tour. The tour invites bloggers to post their own blog using their topic suggestion for the day. My submission for Wednesday is below. For more information, go to http://news.naiwe.com/2009/10/03/great-books-week-blog-tour-october-4-10-2009/

I'd write my autobiography but I don't have it would be redundant. My life story has already been written by the late Erma Bombeck. In her book, if life is a bowl of cherries – what am I doing in the pits? (sic), Bombeck wrote of everyday living as a wife and mother. Admittedly, this may seem strange that a 43 year old man relates to such a book. The thing is, when Bombeck wrote of the daily frustrations of rearing her kids, I KNEW she was talking about me and my sister. My sister and I still take pleasure in implying the other eats worms. We would mimic some of the behavior in this book just for the sake of provoking our poor mother into a tizzy. Bless her heart, Momma didn't know whether to laugh or ground us sometimes. We also had the invisible siblings (Idunno and Idontcare) roaming about the household.

In later years, I related to the book a lot more but from a different angle. Apparently, Idunno and Idontcare grew up and had offspring. They now live in my house. As a parent, I still wonder if somehow Mrs. Bombeck was a prophet. My kids are shocked by the way I provoked my mother as a child. I guess that means I did a good job rearing them. However, it doesn't stop them from provoking me with their bickering and non-stop need. Thanks to the prophecy of Erma Bombeck; I know that when my son gets a speeding ticket, my daughter runs her portable media player through the dyer, and the cat decorates the floor with a strategically placed hairball (all within an hour's time); normalcy has arrived.

People often say "Someday, you look back on it all and laugh". Bombeck suggests: "Why wait?"