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

verses out of the hymnal, one child followed a rolling dime all the way to the altar, and the third stole a sponge from the Holy Water font.
    The minister stood at the door, smiled stiffly and said:
    “You should be thankful the good Lord is looking after you.”
     
    Profile of a Martyr
     
    When the martyrs of our time are being immortalized, there's no doubt a shrine will be erected to the man who must leave the comforts of his home and travel.
    This courageous soul, who sits around airports waiting for a glimpse of O.J. Simpson, and misses his plane because a security buzzer keeps picking up the foil on his gum wrapper.
    This saint of a man, who spends hours in hotels trying to locate the switch that will give him light, who adjusts the shower so that it directs the spray INSIDE the tub.
    As with most heroes, there are few who are appreciated in their lifetime. One cannot possibly understand the frustrations they shoulder.
    That is why I should like to nominate overworked, underpaid, unappreciated Tom Suggs... Father and Martyr who makes his living attending conventions.
    If any of us walked for a week in his shoes, we might have the following story to tell:
    Monday: He checked into the hotel, which has no washcloths, a refrigerator in the bathroom growing penicillin... a balcony that faces a brick wall, a TV set that gets extension courses in math from the university and an air-conditioner-heater with a broken thermometer. There are no light switches. When he summoned the maid she said:
    “You should be glad you're not next to the hospitality suite.”
    Tuesday: The hotel is a floating ark with two of everything, including elevators. There are five hundred and twenty-five rooms and fifteen hundred conventioneers. The meetings are scheduled in the Promenade room, which is on the mezzanine between the third and fourth floors and is serviced by elevator no. 1 between the hours of 3 and 4 a.m. No one knows this. He complained to another conventioneer, who said:
    “You're lucky. I made it to yesterday's meeting.”
    Wednesday: After two days of conversing with chests that say, “Hello there, my name is illegible,” he tries to call home only to find the hotel operator is unlisted. He walks to the desk, places the call and waits for fifteen minutes while his preschooler goes to “get mommy,” five more minutes while she coaxes the baby to say, “Hi Daddy,” and another twenty minutes listening to a report on how his house died due to his negligence.
    The operator observes:
    “You're lucky she puts up with you.”
    Thursday: His luggage still hasn't arrived, but there is a tracer who suspects it has never left the airport at home. As he sits in his room, trying to heat up a “rare” hamburger on a TV set that is flashing math equations, the phone rings and it is a sloshed buddy from the hospitality suite shouting:
    “Hey, buddy, this beats cutting grass, doesn't it?”
    Friday: He sits through five keynote speeches, comparable only to waking up in a recovery room and being asked to applaud. He still cannot find the light switch. The maid says:
    “You're lucky. A man's wife down the hall arrived unexpectedly and found his light switch at 2 this morning. She nearly killed him.”
    Saturday he took two taxis full of clients to dinner at which a record was set for carrying on a conversation without saying one thing that was worth repeating. He called his wife again, who said:
    “Thank God you have adults to talk to.”
    Sunday: As he calls the desk to tell them he is checking out, they inform him his lost luggage is on the way in from the airport.
    As he throws up his hands, he inadvertently finds the light switch in the navel of the cherub lamp at his bedside. As he stands in the rain waiting for a cab, a driver splashes mud all over his suit. The doorman says:
    “You almost got hit. You're lucky the good Lord is looking after you.”
     

 
    6
    “Have a Good Day”
     
    The expression “Have a good day” was