Tag / quotes

by Kelly Mattei

Embracing My Inner Ouiser

Embracing my inner Ouiser.

I saw Steel Magnolias soon after it premiered in 1989, and once I could digest some of the questionable southern accents (Tom Skerritt and Darryl Hannah, I’m looking at you), I loved the movie. As a southerner, I saw characters I could totally identify with. Growing up in Alabama, I knew people like those characters. I knew folks like M’Lynn, Truvy, Clairee, Drum, Shelby, Annelle, and yes, I knew people like Ouiser.

On Facebook, I often see these silly quizzes titled Which Steel Magnolia Are You? Yes, I take the bait and jump right into the questions with gusto. Going into them, I’ve often thought of myself as the very practical M’Lynn. Sometimes, I might be a cross between Claire and Truvy. But after all these months of COVID? I’m becoming Ouiser. And honestly, I’m embracing my inner Ouiser.

Normally, I consider myself a “glass half full” person. I try to see the positive side of things, and I look for silver linings. I’ve never considered myself a “glass half empty” girl. But now, since I’m embracing my inner Ouiser, I might have to become a “throw the glass against the wall” kind of person. Damn glass…who cares if it’s half full or half empty? This is so out of character for me, but I just need to wallow in it right now.

If you’ve seen the film, you know Ouiser is the grouchy, sarcastic member of the friend group. She is “eccentric.” And honestly, she brings a lot of flavor to the movie. Shirley MacLaine, even as a non-southerner, brought life to a character all good southerners have known at some point in life…the grumpy neighbor lady…the bitter teacher…the friend’s mom who locked them out of the house during the day all summer…the old lady with the constant scowl on her face…the old woman who screams at neighborhood kids for being too noisy. We know them.

I haven’t seen the movie in a long time, but I have it on my list of things to watch again in the next month or so. I’ll squeeze it in somewhere between old episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man, Family Affair, Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, and The Partridge Family. Oh, and don’t forget That Girl. You can see Steel Magnolias on Amazon Prime for a small fee here. Yes, I’m digging deep to find some joy…anything that takes me back to a happier time, because life in the days of COVID? Well, a lot of the joy has been sucked out of daily life. I’m just telling it like it is…just like Ouiser would.

So to channel my inner Ouiser, I looked up some of her best quotes from the movie, and here they are…for your reading pleasure:

–I’m not crazy; I’ve just been in a very bad mood for 40 years!

–I’m pleasant, damn it! I saw Drum Eatenton this morning at the Piggly Wiggly, and I smiled at the son of a bitch ‘fore I could help myself.

–Ugh. Leave me alone.

–Don’t try to get on my good side. I no longer have one.

–The only reason people are nice to me is because I have more money than God.

–He is a boil on the butt of humanity.

–A dirty mind is a terrible thing to waste.

–I’m not as sweet as I used to be.

–This is it. I’ve found it. I’m in Hell.

Honestly, Ouiser doesn’t have a lot of the best quotes in the movie (that award goes to Truvy), but her character is a doozy. She says some of the things we would all like to say sometimes, but our manners keep us from saying them. She gives that meaningful scowl…the one that says “eat s**t and die.” It’s not likely I will start walking around telling people to “leave me alone,” but right now, I want to. I want to stand up and scream at the world to just stop! Just stop! Stop trying to make it look like COVID isn’t ruining a lot of our fun! Stop trying to make it look like everything is “normal.” It’s not. And yes, before you come at me telling me “we live in the best country in the world,” I will tell you that yes, I know that. I know I am fortunate to have a loving family and a roof over my head. But damn it, I’m sick and freaking tired of COVID. I know people who have died. I know people who have been terribly ill. And by golly, it’s OK for me to have a bad attitude for a while…just because.

I know my friends and family expect more from me, but frankly, I just want to kick COVID’s ass for messing up the good thing we had going on.

But after all this, I’m sure I will pull myself together. I will not be shouting “bah, humbug” at people or telling them to “leave me alone.” I’m sure that in a few days, I will embrace my inner M’Lynn or Clairee, once again, and move on. But unless you want to encounter Ouiser, you might want to tread lightly till the weekend.

In the meantime, if you want to join the Ouiser Fan Club, call me.

by Kelly Mattei

Time Marches On (Across Your Face)

Time marches on…

If there’s a better TV/movie southern female character than Truvy in Steel Magnolias, please tell me where to see her. Truvy, the hairdresser (played by Dolly Parton in the movie), has some great lines, and one of my favorites is:

Time marches on, and sooner or later you realize it’s marchin’ across your face.

God bless Truvy. We all know she’s right. Well, if you’re under 40, you might not realize she’s right, but sooner or later, you’ll realize it.

***On a side note, my friend, Linda Edwards Campbell, will be portraying Truvy in Steel Magnolias at Flat Rock Playhouse, the State Theater of North Carolina, from May 22 to June 6. For tickets and information, click here! It’s a must see! I can hardly wait to see it!

I went to dinner last night with some girlfriends to celebrate a birthday. The friend who had the birthday is several years younger than I am, so that puts her smack in the middle of her 40s. She can still see the words in books without reading glasses somehow, and she could hear everything that was being said at the next table. I, on the other hand, had to get out my phone and use the camera as a magnifying glass to see the menu, and I was blissfully unaware that anyone was even talking at the next table, because I hear very little of anything that is said directly to me, let alone at another table.

But at some point, we started sharing our favorite quotes about aging. Mine, of course, was Miss Truvy’s quote. Here are some others that we howled about over dinner and drinks before all of us used modern technology and took an Uber home:

“As a graduate of the Zsa Zsa Gabor School of Mathematics, I honestly do not know how old I am.” –Erma Bombeck (one of my favorite humorists of all time)

“I’m not as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was.” –Toby Keith (it makes me laugh every time I hear it)

“Age is not how old you are, but how many years of fun you’ve had.” –Matt Maldre (I say “amen” to this!)

“Old age is not for sissies.” –Art Linkletter (I was likely the only child in America who loved Art Linkletter books. My mother had lots of them, and I read them all…repeatedly.)

“Nice to be here? At my age, it’s nice to be anywhere.” –George Burns (who didn’t love George and Gracie?”

“You know you’re getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.” –Bob Hope (As a little girl, I stayed up late watching old movies, many of which starred Mr. Hope…like “I’ll Take Sweden.”)

“The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for.” –Will Rogers (ain’t that the truth?!? I won’t even go to a restaurant that doesn’t take reservations anymore!)

“At age 20, we worry about what others think of us. At age 40, we don’t care what they think of us. At age 60, we discover they haven’t been thinking of us at all.” –Ann Landers (this is another favorite, because I know it’s the truth!)

We all had a great time celebrating our 40-something friend. And now she knows that in just fifteen years or so, no one will care one bit about what she does, because she’ll be 60. I’ll get there sooner than she does, “good Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise”!

Happy Birthday to my friend again! I’m so happy your birthday made us all talk about these quotes! Let’s all age gracefully, even though time has marched all over my face!

***Featured image from Steel Magnolias***

 

 

 

 

by Kelly Mattei

We Need Erma Bombeck

Today, I was talking with a friend about how depressing it is when it rains for seven days straight. Fortunately, it was a friend who always makes me laugh. And she didn’t fail me this time either. In fact, she mentioned someone I haven’t thought about in years. It’s someone my mother looked up to. My mother and her friends used to sit around and laugh about her. The person she mentioned? Erma Bombeck.

For those of you who are younger than I am, look her up. I don’t care if you look on Wikipedia or wherever, but you need to look her up. Like I told the flight attendant who didn’t recognize Frankie Valli sitting across from me. “This person is a big deal. Go call your mother and ask her…she’ll know.” Erma was an author and columnist who was the voice of moms and housewives everywhere in the 1960s and 1970s.

My mother loved Erma Bombeck. I think lots of moms did, because she said what they were all thinking. She lived like they did. My mother was a stay-at-home mom…back then it was called a “housewife.” While my mother enjoyed being a housewife, it had its challenges. Mrs. Bombeck wrote about the same challenges in her newspaper columns and in her humorous books. And my mother loved her.

My mother and her friend, Polly, quoted Mrs. Bombeck to each other, and they laughed and laughed. I remember seeing Bombeck’s books around the house. If mother was reading one, it was often on the kitchen table, where she enjoyed reading. I can still hear mother laughing out loud, her nose buried in an Erma Bombeck book. And that’s how, as a teenager, I even read Erma Bombeck. I was too young to be a mother or housewife, but even as a teenager, I knew good humor when I read it.

Erma Bombeck is what I’m missing in my life. I need more Erma. In fact, today, just before I started writing, I ordered a few familiar titles from Amazon: If Life Is A Bowl Of Cherries, Why Am I In the Pits?; The Grass Is Always Greener Over The Septic Tank; All I Know About Animal Behavior, I Learned In Loehmann’s Dressing Room; Motherhood, The Second Oldest Profession; and When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It’s Time to Go Home. There are more; these are just the ones I ordered today, and I can hardly wait to get them! You can see them and order them here.

Bombeck had some of the best quotes. Selfishly, I wish she were still alive, so she could guide us with humor through this generation. I know, there are humorous people on YouTube, and there are funny people on Facebook, but dang it…Erma was the original. No one can do motherhood/housewife humor like Erma could do it. If you’re not familiar with her work, you should become familiar with her work. Buy some books and enjoy an evening or two of easy reading that relates to your own life!

Her wit was unmatched, and her quotes were too. Here, words to live by, courtesy of the late, great Erma Bombeck:

  • The grass is always greener over the septic tank. Yes, it’s the title of one of her books, but it is so true, literally and figuratively! Anywhere someone has a septic tank, you know where it is in the yard…just look for the greenest patch of grass. It’s absolutely true. And in life, people always say “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence,” in reference to thinking what others have is better. But really…since we only see what people want us to see, the septic tank quote is more fitting…underneath all that green grass might just be a bunch of poop.
  • If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it. True words. I’ve gotten through lots of hard times with laughter. When my daddy was sick with pancreatic cancer, we laughed a lot…a lot. We knew we had to keep laughing to keep from crying. And it helped us. It helped him. We actually look back on those months with good memories.
  • When your mother asks, “Do you want a piece of advice?” it is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway. This makes me laugh out loud. My mother usually gave good advice, but sometimes I didn’t want to hear it. She gave it to me anyway. And she knew I didn’t want to hear it. If I got mad, so be it. She knew I would get over it. I’m sure my daughter feels the same way about my advice.
  • I haven’t trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I’ve never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex. Erma and I should have been friends. We could have had lunch together.
  • Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you. I think this just means “don’t try to keep up with the Joneses.” I’m a subscriber to that way of thinking. I know there will always be someone taller, richer, thinner, prettier…but there doesn’t always have to be someone happier or more satisfied with their life. Being rich, tall, skinny, pretty…none of that means your life is better. We should all choose our own paths…and enjoy the journey down that path.
  • Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time. Spoken like a true mother. Any mother knows the car is where dropped food goes to die…and create a stink. My husband has never understood this, but he has never hauled around seven kids. No, I don’t have seven kids…I only have one, but there have been times I’ve had seven kids in the car at one time, and they make messes. Moms will do anything to keep them quiet in the car, including letting them eat Cheerios, ice cream, or whatever else they want.  Moms know this. Dads don’t. Fortunately, my child is a teenager now, so the car is cleaner.
  • Children make your life important. While there are lots of folks out there who don’t have kids and don’t want them, for me…this quote of Erma’s is true. I once had a coworker who had two children. I was in my 20s. I said one day, “I don’t think it would be a disaster if I didn’t have kids.” She said to me, “Kids are the meaning of life.” While this isn’t true for everyone, it certainly has been true for me. I only have one daughter, but my life became exponentially better because I had a child. The sky is bluer. The flowers are brighter. Life is better.

The list goes on and on. I could continue to quote Erma, or I could tell you to go over to Amazon or your favorite bookseller and get some of her books. If you don’t, you’re missing out.

I wonder what Erma would have thought of 2019?

Erma_Bombeck

Erma Bombeck

 

 

 

 

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