Ode to Erma Bombeck

If life were a bowl of cherries we would be extremely busy reading the label. Once we found out about how many grams of sugar and sodium we were consuming it would send us into a panic attack. And don’t forget all the preservatives in those little red maraschino cherries. They do look pretty in that peach margarita in the fancy glass topped off with that fecal encrusted lemon slice. I’m trying hard to get over the lemon scare but unfortunately it still haunts me. People tell me it’s an urban legend. I believe in legends, ghosts and the monster under the bed. Everything at one time or another scares me.

So off we go to our primary care physician - the one our health plan says we must see and the moment he checks our weight his eyes roll around in his head and he demands a blood test. The doctor will admonish us for overindulging and request that we speak with a dietitian but the insurance will not cover this so we listen to the doctor’s lecture about our eating habits.

Then the blood tests will come back and it shows our cholesterol level is way over the acceptable mark and we are given pills and a strict diet to correct said problems. By this time the high sodium content has causes our feet to swell up like a dead fish and we can’t slip comfortably into our favorite shoes. So we are forced to wear our flip-flops to work which are against the dress code rule but we have no alternative. More than likely we will be given a verbal reprimand for wearing flip flops to work. Can’t you see we sport elephant feet?

Let’s not even discuss that it’s beach weather and that two piece bathing suit only covers one part of the bloated body. It does coordinate nicely with the flip flops. So we’re back to eating oatmeal every morning – yuck. And now forced to have given up swimming in the gulf due to the oil spill off the coast of Louisiana - that can’t be good for our health. And the sun causes more skin cancer cells and wrinkles stretching out the skin as if it were a decaying rubber band and makes us look like a shar-pei – thank you very much for that compliment. The sand irritates the blister between the toes caused by the flip-flops and it makes us walk funny like a duck. So you see this person waddling along the shore (oil soaked) with way too much muffin top showing wearing an ugly dog suit. Darn those cherries. This would definitely be a great ad for lowering the cholesterol level. Instead of a very healthy looking person with a smile wide enough to swallow an entire water melon with teeth whiter than snow rollicking barefoot in the sand with a handsome model that must be her son and not her mate. Show us the truth.

And while we are consuming these cherries while sitting over the septic tank in Florida the septic tank would very soon become a sinkhole. Could be from the weight we have gained from those cherries. The sinkhole would expand to engulf the house, the garage and the neighbor’s patio and sink quietly into the bowels of the earth. Then we would remember that we cancelled the sinkhole coverage on the house because we couldn't afford that and the medical insurance premium, the deductible, prescriptions for lowering our cholesterol and all those blood test the doctor ordered. So here we sit at the bottom of the pit in you know what - eating our cherries. Darn they are good.