Sandy Supposes....

Idol Worship

PROMPT May 1st

Write about one (or more) of your creative idols. Who do you look up to? Whose work are you most inspired by? Why?

         I suppose I've always been drawn to humour. I appreciate a good laugh and I respect the people who can cause me to snort and spit out my drink reflexively. Humorists appeal to me. They portray the absurd, the strange, and the all too real.

         One of the first such people that could tickle my funny bone with her wit and descriptions of what many would describe as mundane is Erma Bombeck. Good ol' Google depicts her as a humorist "chronicling the ordinary life of a midwestern suburban housewife." Erma wrote of the everyday struggles, disasters, triumphs, and hilarity of a family. Any member of a family could relate and see themselves in her writing.

         I love her joie de vivre. Basically, she coaches us to laugh at ourselves and not sweat the small stuff. Life happens. "If you can't make it better, you can laugh at it." "Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for go live with a car battery." "No one has ever died sleeping in an unmade bed." "When humor goes, there goes civilization."

         I admire her all the more now that I've discovered she wrote her newspaper columns and books while living her life with a hubby, three children and polycystic kidney disease. She made time for her writing. It was important to her, but no more important than her family.

         I don't imagine Erma would be comfortable in the role of an idol. She shared her viewpoint from the perspective of a mother and partner. She had a gift to see the funny, the silly, the ridiculous. She understood that none of us are getting out of here alive. Life is what we choose to make of it.

         Thanks for the laughter, Erma.