Mount Airy. The Earle Theater was crowded, the room smelled of popcorn, and I was onstage shaking my butt.
I don’t mean to say I was shaking my hindparts metaphorically. But worse, I was actually shaking them.
Namely, because derriere-shaking is an important element in the one-man trainwreck I perform in theaters around the country.
So anyway, there I was, gyrating my natiform before an audience, when I had a moment of supernatural awareness.
How did I get here? What career path led me to this moment? Why am I onstage, before several hundred, shaking my fundaments?
Laughs, baby. That’s why.
I will do anything for laughs. I would do a lot worse than shake my culet if it guaranteed a laugh. I would probably run around the theater in nothing but my socks. This is because I am in show business.
Moreover, I genuinely LOVE the sound of people laughing. I gravitate toward laughter. Laughter is what gets me out of bed in the morning. Laughter is everything to me.
I fell into the field of comedy by accident. My career started over a decade ago when I was asked to speak to a local Rotary club. The Rotarians were so hard up for entertainment they called a fledgling local author. Moi.
The prestigious meeting took place in a steakhouse/catfish buffet. I ate enough fried catfish to alarm a cardiologist. I was trembling when I delivered a speech that had about as much warmth and charm as the Berlin Wall.
One elderly man—this is true—had a gaseous expulsion during my speech. But it worked out because, as it happened, he received a more enthusiastic audience reaction than I did.
The next speech I delivered—also true—a woman in the back row had a diabetic event. The paramedics were called.
When EMTs loaded the elderly woman into an ambulance, I overheard the lady’s daughter ask, “Are you in pain, Mama?”
The old woman replied, “Not since the speaker stopped talking.”
So, I’m not sure how it happened, but after my first few speeches, I discovered something invaluable. Laughter is important. Not just a little important. A LOT important.
People don’t want seriousness and solemnity. They have enough seriousness in their lives. What they want is cheer. They need cheer. It’s a necessary nutrient for survival.
So, if you were to boil this whole column down into a few words, I would say that throughout my career of making speeches, I have discovered one important fact about human beings. Nobody hates to laugh.
Not even rooms of uppity dinner guests who look as though they have been involved in a lifelong battle against constipation. These people WANT to laugh. They crave it. All they need is for some brave soul to step up to the mic and say the word “booger.”
The truth is, I grew up the child of suicide, abuse, and sadness. I am the son of a single mother who wept in locked bathrooms when she thought nobody was listening.
A family who, at times, fought to keep a roof over our heads. I am a dropout, with a high-school equivalency. I know what it’s like to live a life that has no laughter in it. I know sorrow. I know disappointment. I am also lucky enough to have found the cure.
Which is why, dear friend, I shake the butt God gave me.