I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise
By Erma Bombeck
Harper & Row, 174 pages, $16.95
When my children were small and I was trying to prove that I was a real grown-up, equal to the daunting task of raising them, I read one of Erma Bombeck`s columns for the first time. I remember being shocked and delighted at her irreverence, her joie de vivre. It`s OK not to be perfect, she told me; nobody is, and you know what? It`s funny! Bombeck became my heroine right then, and remains so to this day.
Hearing that she had written another book (her tenth), I grinned and said, ”Great, what`s it about?” Children who have cancer, came the reply.
Now, Bombeck is so good at what she does-humor-that it seemed an act of perversity for her to branch out into misery. What could be funny about cancer?
But I read ”I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise.” And this is what Bombeck told me: there is humor in the most insane situations, and finding it is what keeps us sane. Furthermore, cancer is not synonymous with death.
Not that Bombeck didn`t have her own misgivings. When she was invited to write a pamphlet for kids with cancer, ”something to give them a shot of optimism,” she nearly declined. But guilt induced her to take it on, planning to gather a few statistics and pull it together in a short time. After her first visit to ”cancer camp,” however, she wrote, ”Somehow I knew when I finished this book I would never be the same person I was when I started it.” She asked the kids how she should begin. They told her the first chapter should be ”Am I Gonna Die?” because that`s what everyone wants to know when they are first diagnosed.
The good news, she discovered, is that for many children the answer is
”no.” Since 1962, the survival percentage rates have jumped: lymphocytic leukemia from 0 to 60 percent; Hodgkin`s Disease from 50 to 90 percent;
retinoblastoma from 75 to 90 percent. The bad news is that for each child, the recovery rate is either 0 percent or 100 percent. ”They were little people whom destiny had tapped on the shoulder and announced, `We interrupt this life to bring you a message of horror.` ”
But the kids refused to be horrified. They persisted in ignoring their symptoms whenever possible, in hoping for tomorrow and laughing today. ”If you can`t handle optimism,” warns Bombeck, ”don`t go around children with cancer.” You`re apt to meet incurable optimists like the kid who wrote, ”My three wishes are to (1) grow hair, (2) grow up, and (3) go to Boise.”
The inimitable Bombeck style fares surprisingly well in such a change of venue. She wisely lets the funny stuff come from her interviewees. ”When three-year-old Carrie`s blond curls were all gone and little fuzz was starting to grow back, she observed with curiosity her father`s balding head as he bent over to tie her shoe. `Daddy,` she asked, `is your hair coming or going?` ”
She writes of how it feels and what it takes to be the mother, father, sibling, friend or doctor of a child with cancer. The matter-of-fact courage of these families and patients may make them seem superhuman, but they are quick to say they`re not. They just want a return to normality, a respite from disaster, a chance to laugh.
Popular writers are not generally known for their willingness to innovate. So it`s a fine thing to see Bombeck march off to a different drummer. It`s even finer when it works.
