Aunt Erma's Cope Book Read Online Free

numb by my wholesomeness. He could have had my roommate (who didn't have a dead spot on her entire body), but he wanted me who was content to sit at home and needlepoint a flag.
    When he could stand it no longer, he would reach out to pull me close—at which point I would back off and shout “If you want someone with touch control, get yourself a microwave oven:.”
    I wondered how Erogenique would have handled thirty years with the NFL, then answered my own question.
    A couple of weeks after I had decided to open my marriage to drafts, while I was watching The Wild and the Spoiled Lynda appeared at the door and said, “I'm dying to ask. What happened when you told your husband you weren't going to go to the football games with him?”
    “He said, 'Okay.' ”
    “That's it?”
    “That's it. Shhh, Erogenique is trying to compromise the funeral director at her stepfather's funeral.”
    Her sister Emma spoke: “You know the trouble with you, Erogenique, is you don't have a good feeling about yourself. You could never have a relationship with anyone because your independence has made you destructive. You don't like anyone else and you don't like yourself because there is nothing to love. You fill me with loathing and disgust!”
    “Did you hear that?” I asked. “I think she's got a point. Erogenique doesn't like Erogenique. She doesn't have a good feeling toward herself.”
    “That's the trouble,” yawned Lynda. “Everybody is trying to make you feel good about yourself. You can't be mediocre in this world any more. You have to be perfection itself. Look at that! Even the commercials are pitching it.”
    We watched in silence as a housewife called Mildred was being interviewed in the supermarket. The interviewer asked Mildred whether her husband preferred potatoes or stuffing with his chicken.
    Mildred, who had given birth to his children, drunk out of the same bathroom glass and caught his colds, said without blinking an eye, “Potatoes. My husband would definitely choose potatoes.”
    When they interviewed the husband in the next scene he said, “Stuffing. I would definitely choose stuffing.”
    In the third scene his wife is visibly shaken as she stammers, “I didn't know . . . but from here on in I will definitely serve stuffing.”
    I turned to Lynda. “Gosh, I don't know,” I said, my eyes glistening with excitement, “I think Bill would have chosen stuffing. What about Jim?”
    Lynda looked at me tiredly. “Who cares?” she said. “I could serve him Top of the Stove Moose and he would have had it for lunch. If Mildred had any sense, she'd give that dim bulb stuffing all right . . . right up his nose!”
    “What are you so upset about?” I asked.
    “I'm upset because I'm sick and tired of sitting around being told how to exhaust myself and pop iron tablets. We're all being manipulated, you know. I read all about how traps are laid for consumers in a new book called Fear of Buying. Supermarkets are like mazes, children drive you crazy to buy things they see on TV, and advertisers have us believing the only time we experience ecstasy is when we drink coffee, take showers, chew gum, or Smell laundry. I've got the book if you'd like to read it.”
    I shook my head.
    “It's a real eye-opener.” Later that day I was emptying the waste basket in the bedroom when I saw my list of complaints for the new open marriage contract. Someone had wrapped gum in it.
    Maybe I was being manipulated . . . but it beat being ignored.
     
     

Unknown
    4
    fear of buying
    t0 TELL YOU the truth, I had never thought a lot about what motivated me to buy.
    As Bob Newhart once remarked about his friendship with Don Rickles, “Someone has to do it.”
    I did as I was told. I was fussy about my peanut butter, fought cavities, became depressed over yellow wax buildup, and buried my head in my laundry like I had just witnessed God.
    I personally knew women who carried a quart bottle of laxative, three pounds of Mountain-Grown