A small red toy car with tiny cream booties hanging inside its windscreen rests on peach-coloured fabric.

Original artwork, not a still

Erma Bombeck

Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

The advice describes children through the unusually formal phrase anyone to whom you have given birth. That roundabout wording makes an ordinary parental relationship sound like a special category of borrower. The joke turns reluctance to lend a car into a sweeping and sharply phrased household rule.

Context reviewed

Share this quote