Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

So it's midnight and I am stuffing my face with sour cream and onion potato chips and I'm on my third blueberry lemonade Smirnoff. (which is deee licious, I  might add).
Two weeks ago the menfolk of my house went away to boy scout camp- leaving my daughter and I to do girly stuff.  Lacking all originality, I decided this should mean shopping, manicures, and dinner.

So we are happily jaunting through the mall when we both spied a book store... not just any book store but a used book store.  This was a gold mine to myself and my word devouring spawn! Used books mean they are cheaper; therefore, we can buy more of them than we had ever dreamed! Among the shelves of well loved volumes of classics (by the way, my favorite classic of the summer is Jane Eyre. I read it over vacation and I desperately want to see the 2011 movie version out on DVD now), my little Bambi legged mini me  fleshloaf and I began using.. wait for it...

British accents.

I really don't know why we did it or what even prompted it, but before we knew it, we were having long, drawn out conversations in the thickest, most obnoxious British accents imaginable. We were giggling incessantly and purposely saying words just to see who had the better accent.

Finally we had our books picked out and I found a treasured Erma Bombeck book. (she was one of my favorite writers because she mastered the art of making a person laugh and cry in practically one sentence. So far, I think i just make people cry.) So we pile up our precious stacks of books and there's a kind elderly gentleman behind the counter. He grabs the Erma Bombeck book and says "You like her?" I said "Oh yes!" (I used minimal words due to him hearing a British accent the whole time I was in there). Then he told me all about how he was at Erma's funeral in Arizona, was a personal friend of hers and her family and how he's "not from around here" then about how she was even funnier in person than in her writing, etc etc.. then he asked, "how long have you been here in the States?" I said in a lowered voice "my whole life.."  He said, "What? But your accent ..." I leaned over the counter, held my hand up to the side of my face and loudly whispered, "..we were pretending.." my daughter LOST IT laughing that I confessed our diabolical ruse to the kindly old gentleman.  He paused for quite a few seconds and looked at me from over the top rim of his glasses and simply said, "Oh Erma would have LOVED you."

I can only hope she would have.  I can only hope.



“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.”

 Erma Bombeck quotes (U.S. humorist, 1927-1996)