Erma Bombeck

I read them by age 10. Loved them, but had no idea what a septic tank is.

SHE WAS FUNNY

I've only read a couple of her things, but they were funny and self-effacing

She was a great comic writer. I discovered her in middle school.

Loved to column. She brought laughter into my home growing up when laughter was in short supply. Close friend of Phil Donahue before they were famous. I think they were next door neighbors in Dayton Ohio.

yeah I remember her books, they were quick reads and very funny.

Her columns were so warm and humorous.

I liked reading her stuff. She reminded me of the kind of mother I wish I had. Quirky, funny... liked her kids.

Once she published If Life Is A Bowl Of Cherries...What Am I Doing In The Pits? I read all of her books as a gayling.

It took about 2 days.

She was probably the first “adult” author I read extensively, probably around 10 or 11. I think perhaps you needed to live in the suburbs to truly relate to her. We had a septic tank, it wasn’t greener, but the grass was kind of sunken down in that area.

I read them all, always wondering why i didn't find her very funny. I read them because I had no idea you could write books like that. I thought books had to be all serious and high brow. So, i liked her.

I remember also needing the laughs in the early 1980s, with recession and nuclear threat and my parents divorce.

I remember when Good Morning America started, it had Erma Bombeck, Rona Barrett and Nancy Dessault. Should have called it Gay Morning America.

I loved Rona Barret! She was the ultimate Jewess.

She would be huge on Cleaning TikTok.

"Housework! Who needs it?"

--Erma, stuck in the year 1963

I still remember her writing about what a bad housekeeper she was. She said when her daughter went off to college, she finally got to bottom of that laundry pile in the basement and found diapers. LOL.

I remember in a column about her own mother, she wrote something like, "My mother was married at 14, had two children by 16, and was widowed at 20, with two young daughters and a sixth-grade education." She went on to talk about how her mother was her hero.

She also wrote of her mom (paraphrasing), "Every January, my mother announces, 'I am going on a diet.' She is shoving a 1,700 calorie brownie into her mouth at the same time. I tell her, 'Mom, at 81, you can no longer do yoga, play professional basketball, or get one leg into Spandex. Enjoy life!'"

She refused to be jumped ahead on a transplant list to save herself at someone else's expense.

She was also close friends with Bill Keane, the cartoonist who wrote "The Family Circus." That was a lot of white suburban shit going on...

Nancy Dussault was a perkier version of DL pariah Bonnie Franklin.

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

She was great at skewering lame '70s self-help fads.

Another line I remember: "My son was a waiter once. It didn't work out. One night the manager overheard him say to a table, 'Would you like anything else before your checks?' 'Yes, the menu!!' To be a good waiter, you have a to be a people person."

She was no Phyllis Diller

Thank God, R25! One Phyllis Diller is more than enough.

Read her from middle school through college (the 80s) and thought she was very funny, but I wasn't as amused when I reread one of her books a few months ago. I guess my sense of humor has gotten too dark to appreciate her frau-lite musings.

Mushingsh.

r26...Phyllis Diller wrote several books in the 1960s, similar in tone to Bombeck...and they were hysterical. My favorite was Phyllis Dillers Housekeeping Hints.

And an introduction by Bob Hope! Now there's a funny guy....