I packed 14 scribbled-in notebooks and 28 pens. I packed a bag of super sour Scandinavian swimmers, a plastic bottle of sangria and peanut butter pretzels.
And, I packed enough underwear to last a month.
You have that many unmentionables?
Yes, dear readers, I do.
I was ready for Dayton. I was ready to wear that robe with Erma’s face on it, the one monogrammed with “Debra” in cursive.
For 32 years, I have poured myself into the lives of teenagers, helping them read critically and find their writer’s voices.
This past July, I retired from public school education. In the fall, Teri Rizvi called to say that I had won, that I would be this year’s humorist-in-residence.
Me? How was this possible?
* * * *
“You’re gonna be like Madeline,” one of my friends back home said.
I had thrown myself a little goodbye party. I bought cheese at Aldi’s, unloaded my booze collection onto the kitchen table, and picked up a bag of ice. In a few days, I would be driving 510 miles to Dayton.
“Oof, I hope not — isn’t she the one who hadda get her appendix out? I replied.
“No, no, not Madeline, Deb’s gonna be like Matilda,” someone else said.
“Oh, we saw that show on Broadway — our kid called it Mah-too-long,” another friend said..
We laughed. They gathered here in my apartment on a Sunday night, this collection of friends.
“You guys, no, I’m gonna be like Eloise.” I corrected them. “She’s the one who lived inside the Plaza Hotel — in New York City.”
More than two million people own copies of Eloise by Kay Thompson. One copy sat on my bookshelf back on Long Island. I loved to imagine this six-year-old living “in the room on the tippy-top floor.”
* * * *
I have been living on the fourth floor. I smile at the maids, ride the elevator, visit the gym, find different nooks in which to pull out my laptop and type my words. I walk along the river. I wrap myself tightly inside my magical robe.
I have been in this hotel for 12 days, have written many words and spoken few. I have taken myself out for chicken kebab, sushi and Graeter’s peanut butter chip ice cream. I have graciously accepted the gift of Charmin toilet paper that Gretchen, the other humorist-in-residence, left for me one night at the front desk. Two-ply, a luxury.
I have shushed the voices that bully me — You have not kayaked through icy fjords. Who are you to be writing a memoir? Self-doubt is prickly; I remind myself that I am not an imposter, that my voice is strong.
At the hotel bar, a guy from Philly wrote down the words, Debra Solomon Baker and Spirit Forward, on a napkin and stuffed it into his pocket. In my query letters, I can tell agents that I’ve already got a strong market waiting for me on the East coast.
One afternoon, I visited the gravesite of our Erma Bombeck. I sat there beside it, teary, reflecting on how this residency has allowed me to secede from the tyrannical country of Cannot. Thanks to the Bombeck family, the judges, Teri and anyone who said, “That woman, Debra, she’s a writer and she’s funny.” I will not be going back to that country. I am too busy brainstorming for my next book.
— Debra Solomon Baker
Debra Solomon Baker is a writing coach for college-bound youth and a recently retired middle school English teacher from St. Louis. She’s working on a collection of essays, Spirit Forward. She is one of two 2026 grand prize winners of A Hotel Room of One’s Own: The Erma Bombeck Humorist-in-Residence Program sponsored by the University of Dayton’s Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop.