Why I am Studying Comedy

Recently I have fallen in love with lists. They are efficient. You don’t need transition sentences. I feel like I accomplished something after I knock off a list of things. Like, I’m so important my thoughts need numbers.

So, in the spirit of 1, 2, 3, here’s why I want to learn more about comedy:

1. I want to be Chrissie Gaddis’s comedy coach. The only problem is that I don’t know anything about it, so I am putting myself on a steep learning curve because I think Chrissie’s life could make her a lot of money if she stopped giving her stories away for free and got herself up on the stage.

2. I have been studying trauma—on a steep trauma learning curve—for the past three years and have not laughed once as I read about that stuff. Not laughing is exhausting.

3. Tonight my daughter and I watched David Chang’s show Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner, the episode with Kate McKinnon where they go to Cambodia, and while there were serious parts, there was a lot of laughter. A lot. Watching people make each other, and themselves, laugh is the best. Lying in bed with your daughter laughing at people laughing is even bester than that.

4. I wrote one book that no one yet has labeled a comedy. Same goes for the movie I co-wrote. I want to write a fucking comedy. I’m sick of shooting people because we brought a gun into the scene or talking about my Vagus nerve.

5. Laughing is like a gym membership. You move your lymph. You get great abs. You can even pull a muscle.

6. When I meet someone and they ask me what I write about, and I say, “I write mostly about being adopted,” the conversation is generally done. I feel like I just served someone a burned pancake and both of us want to get away from the table. I have the feeling that if I say I write about comedy, the pancakes will come out tasting better.

7. On my gravestone, I’d rather it say “She was funny” instead of “She had a lot to say about adoption”.

8. My daughter has the best laugh.

9. And I bet you do, too.

10. By studying, I mean watching funny shows on Netflix. Just to be clear.

11. Chrissie, I believe in you.