I Have Everything I Had Twenty Years Ago, Except Now It's All Lower

By Suzann Ledbetter

Humor is difficult, but domestic humor is almost impossible. An exception to that premise is Ms. Ledbetter." -- Dallas Morning News "If I were a kid again, there'd be galaxies of bright and shining What Will Bes to wish upon. I'd dream of do-anything-I-want tomorrows when I'd be an adult and not dependent on anyone. The future would stretch like a ball of soft taffy: warm, sweet, and infinitely flexible. "Except I am grown up, and sometimes I catch myself wishing upon the star of What Was: cherishing the remembrance of days when it was okay to fail, okay to cry, okay not to know any better, okay to be afraid of inexplicable things that probably don't exist, and okay to want to be taken care of sometimes. "When I was a kid, those wet-behind-the-ears years seemed much like measles: something to be gotten over as quickly as possible. "But now, how I wish I could catch that youthful affliction again. Of course, if I did, how differently it would be diagnosed. A midlife crisis, other grown-ups might call it..." -- from "Second Childhood"

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0517599791
• ISBN13: 9780517599792
• Release Date: April 1995
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 152 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Bombeck with a twang

I'm sure that Suzann Ledbetter is probably used to being compared with Erma Bombeck by now (except for the obvious difference--that Suzann is still living). Let's see, there's "Erma for the 90s" and "Bombeck with a twang."But as much as I liked reading Erma, she was the voice of my mother's generation. Her newspaper columns were clipped and mailed back and forth between my mom and her friends.Suzann, however, is the voice of my generation, coming to me at a time (post-childbirth, pre-menopause) that I can appreciate the humor in such essays as "Good Mothers Do" and "Birthday Boondoggles." I can envision myself sending these gems to my contemporaries, but more likely through e-mail, than "snail mail."But she wisely doesn't limit herself to writing about motherhood. She manages to skewer the rest of the world, and the goofy people in it, as well. Suzann, who lives just outside of Springfield, Missouri, is a contributing editor to Family Circle magazine and writes a Sunday column for the Springfield News-Leader.