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Every day I live in fear of becoming the transmasculine Erma Bombeck – but would it really be that bad? A friendly working relationship with the Family Circus guy (who I’m sure is really nice, no matter what anyone says about that strip), a reliable column, put out a book every two years from mostly already-published work, a fat lecture-circuit budget, a couple of kids, a couple of failed pilots just so you could say you’d been to LA, grand marshal in the Rose Parade, leaving your papers to your alma mater – you could do worse than having trans dads carefully cutting out your columns and pasting them to the fridge (the good indoor fridge, not the supplementary Popsicles-and-game-meat fridge out in the garage). And it wouldn’t take that much tweaking to get there…
Bibliography:
At Tit’s End, Doubleday, 1967
Just Wait Until You’re A Trans Elder Yourself, Doubleday, 1971, co-written with Bil Keane of Family Circus
I Lost Everything in the Post-Gender Depression, Doubleday, 1974.
The Grass is Always Greener Over the Informed-Consent Clinic, McGraw-Hill, 1976.
If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What’s With All These Fleshy Drupes?, McGraw-Hill, 1978.
Uncle Erma's Gender Cope Book, McGraw-Hill, 1979.
Seahorse Parenting: The Second Oldest Profession, 1983.
Family — The Ties that Bind And How To Bind Safely At Family Events, 1987.
When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home: Navigating The TSA As A Transsexual, 1991.
A Marriage Made in Heaven...or Too Tired For Polyamory, 1993
All I Know About Passing Behavior I learned in Loehmann’s Dressing Room, Harper Collins, 1995
Forever, Erma: Best-Loved Writing From America's Most Operated-On Humorist, Andrew McMeel Publishing, 1996
I hear when you’re freezing to death, you hardly even notice. Just feels like you’re getting warmer, and then everything’s over. (I’m quitting nicotine gum again. Day three. I feel like my tongue is dying and everything else in my body is moving backwards. More as things develop.)
The Tranmasculine Erma Bombeck
It's nice to know someone else still remembers Erma Bombeck. I also still look back fondly on Jean Kerr, whose books I was far too young to enjoy as much as I did.
these titles are all pure gold. I can't stop thinking about "When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home"