No. 37: Here’s a Funny Story…

5 Moments of Life Comedy

A few years ago, I came upon a list of things that are supposed to make all humans laugh, regardless of age, culture, ethnicity, from the most urban city in Europe to a remote tribe in the Amazon. I can’t remember all of them, but I do remember a few:

• hitting someone with a cooking utensil

• falling on ice

• a swift fart delivered in silence

• adults dressed as twins

This piqued my own curiosity as to things that make me laugh, since every book I write – the upcoming YOUNG WORLD included – has a deep strain of comedy, even if at times that comedy can be very dark.

So I thought back to some of my favorite funny stories and wondered if sharing them might help me find common threads to my own personal brand of comedy.

In no particular order…

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1. At one of my very first school visits in Virginia, I was performing in front of 600 students, from grades 5-8 in a beautiful, state-of-the-art auditorium, with an elevated stage. Those of you have seen my shows know they are exuberant, rambunctious affairs, where I rile kids up and get them amped at the chance for me to call them up on stage, and for this particular moment in the show, I called on a small 5th grader, who for the purposes of this story, we’ll name Ethan. So Ethan is so jazzed I’ve singled him out to appear on stage, not just in front of his fellow 5th graders, but the older kids too, that he bounds out of his row, races down the aisle, waving his arms like he’s won a trip to Disneyland, at which point he dashes up the stage steps, trips on the last step, flies forward and completely takes me out.

Full-on, drive by, knocked down by a 5^th grader.

I’m flat on the floor, the sweaty imp on top of me. The crowd is a bit gobsmacked, but this is live theater and all we need to do is get up and recover. Only Ethan won’t recover. He has his hands over his eyes and is bent over in some perversion of a yoga plow pose, face down, bottom up, sniveling: “Oh noooo… they all saw me… the 8th graders too…”

I responded with: “Ethan, you need to get up.”

“Noooooooo,” he moaned.

I put my face in his: “GET UP ETHAN.”

He shook his head. “Shaaaaaaame!”

We worked together to muddle to some kind of happy ending – but the memory of his guttural howl is what makes me laugh to this day, perhaps because it was my first sober reminder that every stage show comes with equal doses surprises, danger, and joy.

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2. I bully my farmer partner into buying the most downtrodden, ludicrously unfit baby animals at the monthly auctions, trying to convince him that he can get them real cheap and raise them for a profit. He points out in return that the reason they are cheap is because other farmers know these young, malformed animals are destined for a quick death and are attempting to offload them to suckers, of which I am one. I respond in turn that he isn’t just a farmer, but a miracle worker, and more than anyone on earth, he can nurse these babies back to health.

This does not convince him.

But then one day he comes home with Fatima Jo.

I’m not sure who named this baby calf, but the name stuck, and perhaps it was fitting, because just as the name made no sense, neither did the calf. It had flaming red fur which stood up instead of laid down so she looked like she’d been tumbledried, had missing patches where mites had eaten this fur away, plus one droopy ear, wobbly knees, a lazy eye, and a big ass.

But I loved her. She was my favorite animal on the farm. And every day on the farm, I would go and bottle-feed her.

“Don’t get attached,” my partner grumped. “She’s not healthy and is going to die.”

But weeks passed. My partner fed her like a prized animal, milk and fresh grass, until she was sturdy and strong and even had gained back some of her fur.

“See! You did it!” I thanked him. “You saved Fatima Jo.”

Two days later, she died.

No cause. No reason. She just keeled over mid-meal and that was it.

I was disconsolate. My partner, on the other hand, was furious.

“That damn thing came here, ate all my food and drained my bank account for a month and then dies?”

For a farmer, though, money is love. And that was proof he loved Fatima Jo too.

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3. The first time I ever got stitches, it was because I was inspired by the figure skaters at the Olympics and tried to do a triple axel alone in the middle of a parking garage, as if it’s something you can do without skates, training, or ice, and I hit my head so hard on a pipe that my forehead had to be sewed closed.

Not particularly comedic if you’re a kid, since this is something a kid would most certainly do.

I, on the other hand, was 23 years old.

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4. At some point, someone dropped a newborn sheep on our doorstep, because they knew the farm had animals and they did not want to take care of it.

Given we had no experience with sheep, we had to isolate it for a few weeks, until we knew it was strong enough to be put with the goats. This was intolerable to me, because having grown up intensely lonely, I hated the idea of a lonely newborn sheep, so I took every opportunity to scoop it out of its pen and carry it around the farm with me.

The problem, however, is that we’d also recently gotten a Bernese Mountain Dog, who we named Lady, and on this day, I wandered back to the house, having forgotten to put back the sheep, which was asleep on my shoulder —

That’s when the phone rang.

My partner had been pulled over by the town cops in my car, because apparently cars in Missouri need a license plate on both the front and back and mine only had it on the front. The cop was fine letting him go and giving us a warning as long as I provided proof of car insurance.

“I don’t know where that is!” I said.

“Look it up!” I’m told.

So I put the sheep down to start rummaging through my phone, only to have Lady come bounding over and now I have a standoff between dog and lamb —

“I can’t find it!” I say, swiping wildly.

“Can’t let him go then,” I hear the cop say on speaker.

But now the lamb’s bleating at full volume, racing for the hills, the dog chasing it.

“The sheep! The sheep!” I’m yelping, hustling after both of them. 

Then I remember the cop’s still there and my partner trapped, and in a fit of ingenuity, while chasing dog and sheep, I find my expired auto insurance from last year and send that, hoping to buy time.

“This is expired,” the cop says.

“I’m holding a sheep!” I protest, the lamb now in my arms.

That’s when I hear my partner say very gently to the cop —

“He writes fantasy novels. He’s not quite right in the head.”

She let him go.

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5. Twenty years ago, I was at a dinner party in Manhattan. I’d just graduated Harvard, was working in pharmaceutical consulting, and was very, very lost in life.

This dinner party was filled with 21 year-old, fresh out of Ivy League consultants who did not seem lost in life.

The host said: “Why don’t we go around the table and introduce ourselves? Maybe where we went to school, what we majored in, and what we’re doing now?”

Ugh.

Harvard, economics, consulting.

Yale, economics, banking.

Princeton, government, consulting.

I felt like dumping my face in the poorly cooked burger they’d served.

But then I noticed one girl at the end of the table, who had a mischievous look on her face. Like she, too, had no interest in participating in this game.

Still, when they got to her, she answered the questions.

“My name is Moriah. I went to Wellesley. I majored in Art History. And I’m unemployed.”

The Ivy bots were shocked.

“Oh! That’s… interesting!” said the host. “What made you decide to major in Art History?”

Now Moriah’s gaze sharpened like a hawk’s. It flicked to me like she’d clocked a co-conspirator long before I’d gleaned one in her.

Then she continued.

“The truth is I had no idea what I wanted to major in. So I thought, why don’t I just go to the library and see what books draw me in the most. That seems reasonable, no? So I amble over to the big library on campus and saunter through the aisles, just perusing the books. Seeing what catches my attention. Economics… Math… Government… ugh, boring, dull, nothing to offer anyone with a soul. English… tired. But then, I get to Art History. And those books! Ooooh. They’re big and powerful and they smell of history and institution and patriarchy and rebellion and I find myself pulled to them, some kind of primal lust bursting out of me and the books, and it’s rich and erotic, and now I’m pressing my body against the books and soaking in the power, the girth and it’s not enough and I want to take my clothes off and roll around with them and be one with the books, and I’m like yes, yes, yes, yessssss!” She sipped her drink. “So your question. You want to know why I majored in a field that would leave me unemployed as opposed to working in one of your fields? There’s your answer.”

No one smiled.

I clapped.

We’ve been best friends ever since.

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Now it’s your turn. Tell me a funny story!

Until next week —