Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run

When I was offered the opportunity to read Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run I couldn’t pass it up. What a title. Author Lucy Adams, author of If Mama Don’t Laugh, It Ain’t Funny, is a humor columnist, teacher, mom and wife, and dyed-in-the-wool Southerner. Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run is a collection of humorous anecdotes, high in sarcasm and true-to-life embarrassing moments and low in fluff. My only venture into this genre, really, was Laurie Notaro, who Adams describes as an inspiration.
On a scale of Not-Funny-At-All to Idiot-Girls-Action-Adventure-Club, I give Tuck Your Skirt a Pretty-Darn-Funny.

Adams writes mostly about real events in a way that will absolutely make you laugh. This book would be perfect for the beach, a flight, or a boring meeting (as long as you can hold in your giggling, lest you lose your job and blame me). Stories like, Follow that Baby, that are simple and don’t try too hard are plentiful in this book. They save the ones, like Stinky Feet, that would have stopped me in my tracks if it were first in the collection.

There were a couple of drawbacks for me. The anecdotal form (what this genre is all about) wears on me after a while. I have to read a book like this in chunks. That’s really just a personal quirk.

Back to Stinky Feet. Upon first reading this one, it felt almost racist. Why? Well, writing dialect is tough and she does it quite well, but something about the dialogue rubbed me wrong. I struggled with even mentioning it because I wasn’t sure exactly why, but then I realized, it’s probably because I’m a “yankee communist.”

Yankee communists are featured in the story, Hawg Killin’. Don’t get me wrong, I was raised in NY, but it was upstate. So I’m really a redneck, yankee communist (see also: bleeding heart liberal). Bottom line: I wasn’t horribly offended. I just didn’t find Hawg Killin’ funny.

The majority of the book is funny though. I recommend Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Runfor anyone who wants a quick read and a good laugh. I look forward to seeing what Lucy Adams comes up with next.