Saturday Satire - Genetics: A Comedy Series

 

My son took one comedy class with me…well two; Now he’s Mr. Funny Man every chance he gets. I make one slip of the tongue, verbal blunder, mental hiccup, and he leaps on the opportunity. His eyes bulge and he blares out, “What!?”

He used that one word as a declarative statement, a full sentence. My son fired off joke after joke after joke like fireworks on Independence Day. Let me tell you my story.

I was scheduled to perform comedy in a city two hours from home. My friend and her significant other, I’ll call him Joe went with me for support. Joe drove for us, as he has done several times.

Before I left home I was telling my son about the show, “Carla and Joe are going to the show with me tonight. I need to grab $20 to give Joe for gas.”

My son stopped what he was doing, glared me, and said, “WHAT?!”

“Ma, you’re going to give a grown man twenty dollars to drive you four hours to a sundown town, to listen to you talk about menopause? Twenty dollars will get him four gallons of gas. You’re hilarious.”

His rant continued, “You put Ms. Carla in a bad spot. Now she’s gonna have to rub his feet, scratch his back, cook dinner; All because he’s helping her friend. You think an Andrew Jackson goes a long way.”

I let him get all the words out of his head and into the atmosphere. “You offered me that same twenty dollars to cut the grass, paint the screen door, and repair a hole in the wall.”

When my son finally paused I said, “Well, that twenty dollars for you was just a love offering, you can complete the tasks for free. No need to worry, when I go to your house I will be sure to leave a trail of shoes, clothes, and dishes throughout each room.”

I chuckled. You would have thought we were in sone kind of roast battle. No winner was declared. I strolled off as I said, “And I WILL be giving Joe more than $20.”

Each day my son displays more evidence that he truly has my DNA. In addition to his sense of humor, he has my temperament, my allergies…and my Adam’s apple.

I must not leave out my other son; he’s the real DNA winner. He has my mustache…my chin hairs…and my chest hairs. Just kidding, he doesn’t have chest hairs.”

What is something funny that your child or someone else’s child has said to you?

Monday Musings – The Joke Thief – A Comedic Lesson

 

Comedy 101 Class - Mark Ridley's Comedy Castle

As an active child playing freeze tag on the school playground, I heard my fair share of name calling. If someone was accused of cheating, the other child let the insults fly, but they didn’t fight (on most occasions).

I remember on child chanting, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” I was that child; I didn’t like to fight. My grandmother taught me that chant. It was corny but clever.

Fast forward to modern day me. I’ve been called many names, some good, bad, funny. Well, I can now add joke thief to arsenal of glossy language. Can you guess who called me that? It was my son, the one who is taking a comedy class with me.

The joke he claimed I stole was related to a statement he said to me in a random conversation at home. It was about the comforts of his house versus my house. We both laughed and I said, “I gotta use that for my Humor Happy hour video.” My guess is that he didn’t hear that part of the statement.

My son told me he was telling a friend one of the jokes he was developing for our comedy class. The friend said, “I think I heard that before.”

He said, “How could you have heard it, I haven’t said it in public yet.” 

“On your mom’s TikTok.” The friend pulled out their phone and clicked on TikTok; And there it was. 

My response to the joke thief accusation was, “you did not say you were going to use that as a joke. It was a random funny observation.”

Like kids on a playground, we had a (friendly) banter going back and forth.

“Ma, can you please wait until I at least say my jokes on stage before you repeat them?”

I made an agreement with my son that I wouldn’t share any of his jokes…in public. I might tell my mom…or my brother, but not the “public.”

I reminded my son that many of my jokes come from observational humor; things that I see happen around me and to me. As he now knows well, things he and his brother say aloud, become fodder for comedy.

I read my son my Miranda rights of comedy:

“You have the right to remain silent in my presence; anything you say, can and will appear in my comedy.”

What situation has brought a little humor to your life recently?