performance. My body tolerates alcohol about as well as a vegetarian can swallow a Hardee’s Angus Thickburger. A couple guys from the paper were filming my wild, tipsy speech, and I sent in the tapes and was hired.
Oh, my gosh. Here I am headed for the airport and will have to follow Dave’s act as well as that of a big-shot columnist at USA Today : Craig Wilson.
I was thinking, “How does a girl top Dave Barry?” Well, she doesn’t. Then I remembered my unicycle and figured he couldn’t ride one while throwing candy and condoms to the crowd.
This is the point at which I called the airline’s 1-800 number and I tried for half an hour to converse with the representative of unknown cultural origin.
“May I take a unicycle on the airplane?” I asked, trying to speak slowly, knowing my hick vowels would throw him for a loop.
“Yu wunt do dake whut?”
“Do you know what a unicycle is?”
“No, ma’am. I do not know such wud be called dat.”
I thought a moment. “Do you know what a clown is?”
“Shu I do.”
“Clowns ride YOON EEE CYCLES. Day have ONE WHEEL.”
“I see. Vedy gud.”
He put me on hold for twenty-two minutes while I passed the time eating an entire bag of Extra Cheesy Doritos, and returned to say I could pack my one wheel and head on to Dayton.
“Yu gong haff to take off de pedals fust.”
“What? How do you take off the pedals?”
He grew silent, processing my Southern language and question. “I know nutting bout dat. You also gong put yoon-e-cycle in box no bigger dan twenty von by thutie tree.”
I politely thanked him and decided I’d let Dave Barry rule the show. After all, he’s earned it. I’ll just stalk him instead of trying to top him.
My plane, minus the unicycle, arrived late, but I managed to sit in the fancy black car in the exact spot Barry’s slender and probably firm ass had sat. I figured that’s as close to the man as I’d ever get. I told the driver to “Please hurry,” and was able to catch the last half of his act and, boy…was he good. No, he was great.
Naturally, I put him on my Stalking List. But so did five hundred others at the conference, so the line to get to him during his book signing was a mile long. I waited, mingling with other writers and then held out my book to him. I had bought Boogers Are My Beat , thinking that would be right up my entertainment alley. He must have been exhausted, but he was more than gracious and smelled like Tic Tacs and good cologne, and I just knew he’d read How to Climb the Bestseller Ladder: The Secret Is Grooming and Hygiene .
After he signed my copy, pretending to have actually heard of me, I rushed up to my room, excited about what he must have written with his hot little pen. Perhaps it was, “Loved your first book!” Or maybe, “Ditch Tidy Stu and Run Away With Me.”
I locked my door and took a deep breath. And there it was. “To Susan Reinhardt: A Goddess. Dave Barry.”
Oh, mercy saints alive! Is this REALLY what he wrote? That night I went to sleep happy and dreaming of my future as his replacement, just as other humor columnists have held that very same and impossible dream.
The next day there was quite the commotion during one of the sessions. Women everywhere were talking about what Barry had written in their books. This is when my enormous balloon popped.
“He said I was a goddess,” one woman shouted in euphoria. “Me, too…me, too…me, too,” fifty more squealed.
That ended my stalking of Dave Barry.
Later that evening, however, the Bombecks arrived. As in Erma Bombeck’s family. I’m crazy about Erma. The conference was premiering a public television documentary about her life, and the entire family was seated onstage for the five hundred of us to gawk at and perhaps question after the film.
First, I’d like to say that her children, Betsy, Andrew and Matthew, are precious and not a bit snooty, nor is her husband, Bill, a kind and quiet man. They stuck around for most of the conference.
On Saturday, Tim Bete, who is supersane and calm and in charge of everything and who did a splendid job, informed me that since I was the lunch keynote I’d be sitting with the Bombeck family. Had he told me that before he hired me, I’d have NEVER had the nerve to do this gig but would be in a ditch somewhere drinking Mad Dog and foaming at the mouth and nostrils.
After recovering from a heart attack the moment his words were out, I excused myself to the ladies’ room to either die or pray. I fell on my knees, not caring that a woman muffled a scream when she saw this.
“Dear God,” I prayed aloud, but not too loud. “Don’t let me mess this up. I’ll cut my sin count in half. I’ll give more to the poor. I won’t complain about having four breasts when some poor women have none. But please, just this once, let things go well, and I won’t bug you about personal favors such as less cellulite or an end to bloating. At least not for an entire week will you hear that selfish stuff from me. Amen.”
I have to say it couldn’t have gone better, save for the statue of Mary covering her ears and blushing when I told the crowd about my friend Brewster’s near fatal crotch amputation. Only one lady folded her arms and gave me that mean, “I hate you and plan to kill you” stare. No one threw things or booed.
But I did throw things at them. I had some hot-pink tape measures as a promotional item and hit an attendee so hard in the face she may need a glass eye. I told her how sorry I was and gave her a free book.
My new friend Laverne, who writes funny senior citizen columns, said, “Whine, whine, whine. It’s not like she doesn’t have an extra eye.” God, I love Laverne.
The highlight of the event was when Betsy Bombeck, a fun-loving woman, bought two of my books. In fact, that was the highlight of the entire year promoting this first book.
I guess she bought them because I didn’t take out her left eye.
She’s smart enough to realize they come in pairs.
Four Teats to the Wind
H ere’s the problem: I have four tits.
Five if you count the time I had a zit the size of a golf ball on the right boob. If not, then four, just like a cow. Mooooo. Though my father said cows will often have an underdeveloped hind teat or, if you want to get techy, a supernumerary and nonfunctioning hint of a teat.
It didn’t used to be that way. After suckling two pigs (children of my own), I was a normal, though quite saggy, regular-breasted mother of two. Those who read my first book know I broke down and purchased myself a set of fake knockers. It was a procedure my husband said was for bimbos and redneck women, so I’m not sure in which category I fit, but I threw him right into the asshole category for even saying such a thing. You can bet he didn’t get to see them for quite a long spell.
All I know is that I was glad (at first) I got the old floppers lifted, stuffed, tucked and
