If Life is a Bowl of Cherries - What Am I Doing In The Pits by Erma Bombeck

Author:Erma Bombeck [Bombeck, Erma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-03-31T05:00:00+00:00

Unknown

9

“Gametime”

The other morning I watched five game shows in a row on television. I wanted to turn them off, but I was too mesmerized by the contestants.

The first one was a frail woman who said, “I am a simple, average housewife,” then proceeded to win a toaster by humming the fight song of Bangladesh High.

The second one said she was a mother of seven, then spewed out the fuel formula for the Russian Soyuz XI space flight last year.

The third was also a “typical, suburban homemaker,” who won a year's supply of tulip bulbs by answering that the Sixth Crusade in Europe was led by Frederick II in 1228. (I thought it was Billy Graham in 1965.)

After I flipped off the tv set, I sat there stunned for a minute. Not only could I not remember what I had for breakfast three hours before, but I realized that mentally I had let myself go to pot.

I prattled on at cocktail parties about Jacqueline Onassis traveling with four silk sheets, and how David Cassidy got a hickey on prom night.

My vocabulary had dwindled to three Buckley-type words: Erudite (meaning smart), which I didn't use for years because it sounded dirty. Deciduous (to lose one's leaves), which I read off a tree at the Garden Center. And noxious, which I overheard my ten year old use to describe my casserole. (I think it means you can't get it without a prescription.)

At card club, I broached the subject, “How in the world do those women on game shows do it?”

“They fake it,” said Gloria. “Anyone can go on an intellectual crash program and change their image in five days.”

“Like how?” I asked.

"First, put copies of the London Times Literary Supplement in your bathroom. That's status. Then when you go to the beauty shop, take a stack of books along and run your fingers across the lines as fast as you can turn the pages. Everyone will think you're a graduate of Evelyn Wood's speed-reading course.

“When you're in a crowded room, look perplexed and say in a loud voice, ”Archie Bunker? Who publishes him?" Confide to the town gossip that you had to buy a truss in order to carry the Sunday New York Times around.

“And above all, put together a group of one-liners for dinner parties such as, ”Isn't it incredulous that there would be fifty-seven-million, ninety-three-thousand United States dollars in circulation last year and I cannot find thirty-five-cents for a school lunch in the mornings?"

“I don't know, Gloria,” I said, “I still can't figure out how this housewife knew about Frederick II in 1228.”

“Just a lucky guess,” said Gloria.

“Look,” said Jackie, throwing in her hand, “let me give you a piece of advice. ”Don't get hooked on game shows. I once watched game shows every day for a week. I began with the 'Gong Show' right after breakfast and didn't stir from in front of the set until 'To Tell the Truth' went off at seven-thirty.

"By this time I had undergone a complete personality change.

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