Erma Bombeck Quotes - Page 5

When you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home.

A grandparent is the only baby-sitter who doesn't charge more after midnight - or anything before midnight.

A child needs your love most when he deserves it least

If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.

Most mothers entering the labor market outside the home are naive. They stagger home each evening, holding mail in their teeth, the cleaning over their arm, a lamb chop defrosting under each armpit, balancing two gallons of frozen milk between their knees, and expect one of the kids to get the door.

Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.

People shop for a bathing suit with more care than they do a husband or wife. The rules are the same. Look for something you'll feel comfortable wearing. Allow for room to grow.

I have seen my kid struggle into the kitchen in the morning with outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle.

I used everything you gave me.

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

My son would walk to the refrigerator-freezer and fling both doors open and stand there until the hairs in his nose iced up. After surveying $200 worth of food in varying shapes and forms, he would declare loudly, 'There's nothing to eat!'

For the first two years of a child's life, we spend every waking hour tryibg to get the child to communicate. Then we spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out how we can reverse the process.

Once you see the drivers in Indonesia you understand why religion plays such a part in their lives.

How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?

People usually survive their illnesses, but the paper work eventually does them in. Filing a claim for insurance is terminal.

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you.

Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter productivity.

I take a very practical view of raising children. I put a sign in each of their rooms: 'Checkout Time is 18 years.'

When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he's doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911.

I am always behind the shopper at the grocery store who has stitched her coupons in the lining of her coat and wants to talk about a 'strong' chicken she bought two weeks ago. The register tape also runs out just before her sub-total. In the public restroom, I always stand behind the teen-ager who is changing into her band uniform for a parade and doesn't emerge until she has combed the tassels on her boots, shaved her legs, and recovered her contact lens from the commode.

My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.

The fact that Americans drag around the world by the busloads to glimpse the past probably has something to do with the youth of our country. We revere anything older than George Burns.

What makes people laugh? . . . It's a happy marriage between a person who needs to laugh and someone who's got one to give.

For years, my husband and I have advocated separate vacations. But the kids keep finding us.

Housework can kill you if done right.