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

without warning. At that time, students are instructed to go to their lockers and stand at attention. DO NOT UNLOCK YOUR LOCKER UNTIL A TEACHER INSTRUCTS YOU TO DO SO. Thermoses will be destroyed by the custodian.
    3. Because of student demand, we are selling fresh fruit by the door in the cafeteria. This is on a trial basis. If we find this is all students are having for lunch it will be discontinued. Remember, the fruit contains sugar and Billy Tooth is watching you. To avoid congestion at fruit counter, please have correct change.
    4. Teachers have reported to the office that raisin boxes and milk cartons have been found on the school grounds. We know there are students who have been sneaking nutritious foods on the premises and for this reason students have been posted and are instructed to “take names.”
    5. Your principal will be patrolling the lunchroom where he wants to see potato chips, candy bars, tortilla chips, soft drinks and ice cream. Remember, junk foods build soft bones, soft teeth and make you sleep a lot.
    Trust me, it will work.
     
    The Right to Declare War
     
    I read the other day where a body that was believed to be dead was recovered from Lake Michigan. When it warmed up considerably, thaw set in and the person was alive.
    Big deal.
    Thanks to well-meaning merchants who set their refrigeration at wax museum temperatures, I am in a solidified state from May to September. No one even notices.
    I go to a movie carrying a coat over my arm. I go to the supermarket and spend half my time warming my hands on the rotisserie. I drive my car on the wrong side of the street just to get a patch of sun on my arm. The other night at an intimate little restaurant, I said to my husband halfway through dinner, “Would you put your arm around me?”
    “You wanta make love or you wanta eat?” he asked, buttering a piece of garlic bread.
    “It's nothing personal,” I said. “I'm freezing to death. Can you see anyone around us?”
    “Not too well,” he said, squinting into the darkness. “Why?”
    “If everyone else is hanging from hooks, maybe we got into the food locker by mistake.”
    “I'm perfectly comfortable,” he said, snuggling into his wool sport coat. “Maybe you're anemic or something. You should go to a doctor if you're cold all the time.”
    In the doctor's office, the nurse smiled and said, “Hello.”
    “That's easy for you to say,” I grumbled, “you're wearing a sweater.”
    She showed me into a room where she instructed me, “Take off your clothes and slip into this.” I put on a paper gown with a back exit big enough to drive a truck through and slid onto the cold metal table. A blower from over the door blew my chart right off the table. I was shivering uncontrollably when the doctor came in, took a stethoscope out of the refrigerator, and placed it on my chest. I blew on my hands and coughed.
    He stood up slowly, removed the stethoscope from around his neck and walked slowly to his desk. “If I didn't know better, I'd think you were dead.”
    “What gave me away?” I asked.
    “The tear in your eye when my breathing steamed up your glasses.”
     
    Register Camera Nuts
     
    You will understand me when as a woman who is married to an amateur camera freak, I respectfully suggest that some kind of legislation be passed requiring a permit to carry a loaded camera.
    I don't mean to overreact, but I live in fear that someday my husband will point that thing at me, forget he has taken off the lens cap, and click click! I'll end up another statistic at Fotomat.
    I have been photographed walking out of a public bathhouse in a Michigan campground wearing a nightgown, curlers, and rain slicker... fishing around in my mouth with my fingers trying to remove a fishbone... and there are thirty prints floating around somewhere of me on my side in a bathing suit that I would give up my next unborn child to get the negatives of.
    The other day my husband was flipping the camera around