Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste, was an American humorist who achieved great popularity for a newspaper column that depicted suburban home life humorously, in the second half of the 20th century.For 31 years since 1965, Erma Bombeck published 4,000 newspaper articles. Already in the 1970s, her witty columns were read, twice weekly, by thirty million readers of 900 newspapers of USA and Canada. Besides, the majority of her 15 books became instant best sellers.
Born at 4:40am-EST
Her father also suffered from polycystic disease, and died when she was 9.
The $1.5 million advance fee and all proceeds from her book "I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to go to Boise" was donated to cancer research.
Dubbed by Life Magazine "the Socrates of the ironing board".
Mother of Michael Bombeck.
Biography in: "American National Biography". Supplement 1, pp. 53-54. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Dreams have but one owner at a time. That is why dreamers are lonely.
I once told a graduation class that fame is Madonna; success is Helen,Keller. Know the difference.
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared,legally dead.
Guilt is the gift that keeps on giving.
The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy,breathing again.
I do not participate in any sport that has ambulances at the bottom of,the hill.
The suburbs were discovered quite by accident one day in the early 1940s,by a Welcome-Wagon lady who was lost.
On mothering: It is not until you become a mother that your judgment,slowly turns to compassion and understanding.
There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.
I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food,Housework can kill you if done right.
Written on her tombstone: "I told you I was sick.
When humor goes, there goes civilization.
It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.
No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick.
All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.
I have seen my kid struggle into the kitchen in the morning with outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle.
If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.
Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
One never realizes how different a husband and wife can be until they begin to pack for a trip.
In Russia, as I sat there day after day wearing headphones, listening to the interpreter struggle to make our words relevant, I wondered if we could establish meaningful rapport with a nation that had never seen raisins dance in dark glasses on TV. . . never had a garage sale.
The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one.
Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.
I come from a home where gravy is a beverage.
You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.
When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me.
There was a time when the one singular thing that held a marriage together was the threat of getting the kids.
Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.
Laugh now, cry later.
We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies, and the sand out of our belongings.
Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.
One certainty when you travel is the moment you arrive in a foreign country the American dollar will fall like a stone.
It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.
Family life got better and we got our car back - as soon as we put "I love Mom" on the license plate.
It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.
It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows.
I am not a glutton-I am an explorer of food.
Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated.
Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.
Youngsters of the age of two and three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub.
I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.
Never order food in excess of your body weight.
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
I have a hat. It is graceful and feminine and give me a certain dignity, as if I were attending a state funeral or something. Someday I may get up enough courage to wear it, instead of carrying it.
All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.
A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday.
Never have more children than you have car windows.
It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.
Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.
Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.
My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.
Car designers are just going to have to come up with an automobile that outlasts the payments.
Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.
I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes. .
