If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? by Erma Bombeck

Author:Erma Bombeck
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Parodies, Humor, Form, Anecdotes, Literary Criticism, Marriage & Family, Political, General, Topic, Domestic Relations, American, Wit and Humor, Essays, Housewives, American Wit and Humor, Women
ISBN: 9780449208397
Publisher: Fawcett
Published: 1978-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

Kissing by Mutual Ratification

This country has to make a hard-and-fast rule about greeting people with a kiss.

Either we all are, or we all aren't. Frankly, I gave up kissing people hello at the age of seven when my mother hired a piano teacher who chewed garlic. It was enough to make you do the Minute Waltz in ten seconds.

It wasn't until I began appearing on talk shows that I saw the return of the kissy-kissy. It was weird. The same persons who kissed you when you walked into the studio, also kissed you when you returned from the makeup room, the green room, and the ladies room. Not only that, but when you saw them again on the set, they acted like they hadn't seen you since World War I when they left you for dead in Paris with the fever.

Actually, kissing people hello takes some' skill. First, you have to establish who is going to be the kisser and who is going to be the kissee. There should be no indecision once the kisser has decided to plant one on. He or she should grab the kissee by either the hands or the shoulders and kiss from the left (only vampires approach from the right).

If you are kissing another woman, beware of earrings that will strike you blind, jewelry that can puncture the inflated parts of your body and instant asphyxiation in a nest of stiff hair. (I was once speared and deflated by an open pin on a name card that said, “Hello, My Name Is Inez Funkhouser.”)

Of prime consideration is the length of the kiss. What is considered good taste for a kiss of greeting? I have seen producers greet guests in such an enthusiastic way that I can only assume (a) he was giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dead woman or (b) they are leaving after the show to pick out the dishes.

A hello-greeting should be a quick, impersonal peck with all the passion of a sex-starved orangutan. Some kissers are so casual that while they are pecking you, their eyes are picking out the next kissee.

The person who is far-sighted encounters other problems in the kissing custom. I once embraced a water cooler for five minutes while insisting, “What do you mean I don't remember you, Florence?”

It is generally acknowledged that one woman kissing another, especially when she sees her all the time, is “senseless.”

As I said the other day when I kissed a man with a toothpick in his mouth, “Ouch.”

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