Do You Talk Funny?. David Nihill
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point and, as Birbiglia showed us, even if it wasn’t funny then, it might be funny now. As Charlie Chaplin said, sometimes “to truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it.”
We want to identify topics you already know well and already like to talk about. This will make your on-stage delivery much more engaging. Imagine your best friend, partner, or coworker completing this sentence: “(Your name here) is always talking about . . .” These are the beginnings of your story list, which we will edit as we go forward through the book.
Often listening to other people’s stories will jog your own memory. With this in mind, buy tickets to a comedy or storytelling show and go see it this week, or listen to a podcast like The Moth, Risk, Mortified, or Snap Judgment. Remember, great stories often come from seemingly mundane topics.
“The end of laughter is followed by the height of listening.”
–Jeffrey Gitomer
In 2000, I was lucky enough to spend a summer on a work and travel program in the United States with a group of other Irish students. The original plan was to live in Boston, but, faced with a shortage of temporary housing at the time, we ended up in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. Not quite the intellectual landscape of MIT and Harvard, but that wasn’t going to stop our good time. We quickly embraced the state motto, “Live free or die,” and set about having as much fun as possible in our new surroundings: freely living it up, pushing our boundaries, and hoping that we didn’t die.
Then one day my neighbor handed me a beer bong. It had never before occurred to me to drink beer through a funnel. Frankly, I didn’t see the point. As a culture, we Irish love a drink way too much to shoot it down our throats through a tube. Plus, Ireland only has one drinking game—it’s called life.
“Call me old-fashioned,” I said to my neighbor, looking at the outstretched funnel in his hands, “but a pint glass works just fine.”
“That’s fine. If you’re not up for it, you don’t have to.”
My eyes narrowed as my competitive streak kicked in. Ireland doesn’t win an awful lot in sports, but we are undefeated in the pursuit of Pyrrhic victories.
“Give me the funnel.”
Twelve funneled beers later, I finally bowed out. Now, anyone familiar with drinking beer from a funnel knows exactly what I looked like at this point and exactly where I was heading. It wasn’t long before the shout “Hampton Police, open the door!” came, as a fist on the other side of our apartment door knocked loudly. I’d seen the cultural masterpiece that is Cops, which even ran in Ireland, so I knew they needed a warrant to come in. With the funnel in one hand, I politely pulled back the curtain that covered the door and gave them a friendly wave.
The door flew open abruptly. Turns out, Cops was not an accurate representation of police protocol.
“Where’s the guy in the gray shirt?” the officer shouted as he stepped forward menacingly. Oh shit, I thought, that guy is screwed.
Looking down, I realize that I am the guy in the gray shirt.
Oh shit.
And that’s when the audience really laughs. The moment I realize that I’m the one the cops are looking for is one of my proven laugh lines. It’s a story I have told many times to friends and family, and I know where they will likely laugh.
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