“I look out at this sea of accomplished and savvy women,” the stately anchorwoman-author René Syler said to a dining room full of 120 working mothers, “and I wonder if you had the kind of morning I had.”

Her voice shifts into hysteria mode. “‘Come on! Come on! Come on! Come on! Wake up! Let’s go! Let’s go right now!’ I run to the bathroom. I run back like my hair’s on fire. No one has moved. ‘Okay! No PlayStation for the whole week. No TV. No laptop.'”

The audience is already chuckling when Ms. Syler, the former co-anchor of CBS’s “Early Show,” adds that one of her children wears only camouflage clothes. “Camo pants, camo shirt, camo cap, camo coat — how hard is that to match? Fifteen minutes later, he doesn’t have his socks on.”

The women are putty in her hands now. “And my husband. God bless him, what would he do without me?”

Wahoo! She’s giving them just what they need: two hours away from work — “Off to a lunch meeting, boss!” — to talk and eat broiled salmon and laugh their heads off about all the dirty little secrets of motherhood, gleefully exposed by momics.

You know, mothers who are comics. It’s a new word.

Okay, it’s not a great word, but momics may be the next big thing. (Or maybe guy comics will just keep joking about not getting enough sex. You never know.)

In truth, the event last Thursday was the first all-momic program for Executive Moms, an organization of working mothers who get together for lunch and a speaker three or four times a year (Cost: $70. And you don’t really have to be an executive, just employed and maternal. Check out executivemoms.com.)

The lunch is a chance to network, of course. What Manhattan lunch isn’t? But more than that, one attendee, Chelsea Most, said it’s also a huge relief.

“As a mom you think, ‘Maybe it’s just me. How is it everyone else seems to go to work and have figured it all out?'” Ms. Most, an MTV producer, said. “And you go to events like these and realize: They haven’t figured it out.” Hooray!

It is precisely that discovery that the momics were celebrating at the Harmonie Club lunch. Ms. Syler has a new book out, “The Good Enough Mother,” and the title alone made the founder of Executive Moms, Marisa Thalberg, leap to the phone to invite her to speak.

Most working mothers actually relish their dual role, Ms. Thalberg, an advertising executive, said. On the other hand, they also know that they’re not doing everything perfectly. An Executive Mom gathering is a place where women can laugh about the time they dropped the BlackBerry in the training potty and blamed the poor reception on their service provider. Supermoms are out. In fact, they are to momics what New Jersey is to standard-issue stand-ups.

“Wow,” momic Jill Shely said, remembering the time when her newborn wouldn’t sleep. Until then, “I didn’t realize those child safety bars were to keep me from throwing the baby out the window.”

Momic Nancy Witter was fired from her office job and recalled how her boss tried to cushion the blow. “He said, ‘I don’t even know why you’d want to work in an office.’ I said, ‘Well, because it’s an ideal place to make free phone calls and get school supplies for the kids,'” she said.

Grins all around the room. Englishwoman Sherry Davey, however, won the most applause by talking about her 4-year-old’s birthday party. “I invited all my friends, especially the childless ones because they’re the ones with the most advice. ‘Tell her to just sit still.’ Oh yeah. That’ll work. Or, ‘Bring her to the restaurant.'”

Oh, how the mothers cracked up at that one. “She’s so right!” “Sit still!” “Restaurant!” Ha ha ha!

It’s not like Jerry Seinfeld was up there, killing (such a male phrase). But it’s not every day that a lady gets to hear a couple of good lactation jokes, either. And when those jokes are on company time, well, that’s what I call a perfect play date.

Er … lunch date.