Doing Stand-Up Comedy, Sort Of

The idea of me doing stand-up comedy is something I have thought about over the years.  I would like to do it one time.  I used to do a lot of public speaking and although I really can't tell a joke to save my life, I know I can tell some funny stories.  I also know that over the years I've had some funny things happen to me and other people have found some of them amusing.

I watched my friend Larry in New Jersey, (he was born funny) do a stand-up routine for a charitable event at his Temple and to no one's surprise, he was funny.  I've been making a lot of Uber/Lyft riders laugh in my car with some original material and by telling them about my other riders.

Recently, a passenger in my car, suggested that the two of us do stand-up together, which is about as unlikely as the Jets winning The Super Bowl, the Knicks winning the championship and the Mets winning the Super Bowl, all in the same year. (It did happen in 1969, but that was 50 years ago)

However, since I do like to write and sometimes I do it well, what if I wrote about doing stand-up with this passenger? It's difficult enough I think to write something funny for you to say, but how about trying to write something funny for someone else to say and you really don't know her? If you, (not you Dad) went to a comedy show and two people got on stage who had never done stand-up and had only met once for nine minutes and one was the other's Uber driver, would it be funny watching them try to be funny?

I think it would be.  I was going to ask my funny friend Larry, but I got a thumb's up unexpectedly from another source.  My last ride on a Saturday night in Charleston, was the passenger who suggested we do stand-up and the next Saturday morning in Charleston, was actually a woman who was starting a career as a stand-up comic.  I asked her and her sister if my idea would be funny and they laughed and said it would be.  Her advice was, "if you think in your heart you should do something, you should do it."

If you want to blame someone for what I am about to do, you can blame me.  Or, you could blame the passenger who made the suggestion, or the stand up comic I just mentioned.  Even better, blame Senator Al Franken.  I read his book recently which was great and it was about his career as a comedy writer and a US Senator.  If you don't think it could get worse than me writing a comedy sketch, what if I was running for a political office???