This past week has reminded me how lucky I am to be doing comedy. Comedy has given me opportunities I never would have had otherwise. It has taken me places I normally don't go, and allowed me to meet people I would normally not meet. In the last week, I drove to a beautiful part of Ontario known as Gananoque for the first time with two other comedians to do a show on a St Lawrence River boat cruise, and 5 days later I did a show with 4 different comedians, some of which I hadn't seen in a while, at a seniors residence.
How many people can say they have been paid to hang out on a cruise ship one night and then be paid to get drunk with old people in a seniors residence 5 days later?
We were told at the seniors residence not to make fun of mental illness. An odd request to say the least, especially considering most mentally ill people I know are comedians.
Show time is 7pm, so we get in an elevator in the lobby at 6:45pm. It must have been a big night at the old folks home because our elevator was crammed with 5 comedians, 5 residents, and 2 walkers. We made stops at every floor between the lobby and the 12th, where we met people that would have to wait for the next elevator. We arrive on the 12th floor to see the fitness room/dining room/stand up club, crammed with about 60, under-stimulated old people waiting for us. Some aren't going to understand the jokes even with both hearing aids cranked to the max, because they speak Portugese or Spanish, but lucky for us, Margaret, a roughly 70 year old woman with the wear of an 85 year old, sat right up front. She used her completely toothless, smokers laugh liberally, laughing at both the correct and incorrect times.
I am on last out of the group of five. The show has been pretty good so far despite the sound system, which was essentially a fisher price microphone plugged into a 20 year old ghetto blaster. I start my show and Margaret, right on cue laughs at everything until I tell a joke about hunting ducks. This is the first time all night we dont hear the front row cackle. It really threw me off, so I ask her why she didn't laugh. With conviction she says, "I didn't like that one, I'm an animal rights activist." I then ask how she is active in the fight for animal rights. She says, "I wear shirts with designs on them." I tell her it sounds like she takes it pretty seriously. With astonishing authority she says, "Yes. I don't like the elimination of animals." I then ask her about the plate of chicken wing bones on the table in front of her. It looks like you did a pretty good job eliminating them. It takes a level of commitment to remove every last thread of meat from a chicken wing when you don't have teeth. Everybody in the room began laughing including Margaret. I guess she didn't think her morals through all the way. The conversation ended there and she allowed me to continue with my show that had already met its premature pinnacle.
I had never had so many compliments after a show before. Some telling me I was funny, some telling me good job, and some, just glad I got a good one in on Margaret.
How often do you get the chance to put a 70 year old woman in her place in front of her peers and get paid for it? Boy scouts like to help them cross the street, I like taking them down a peg.