Game knows game

No doubt when you saw the headline, and, knowing that I’m a comedy writer, your mind went to various unsavory “Little Miss Muffet” jokes you’ve heard in the past. Funny enough in their day, I’m sure. But for a joke to be funny now it needs to be fresh and new, and pack an element of surprise. It would be easy to take a walk down memory lane to my high school days when I viewed a passed-around copied-and-recopied HBO special with foul-mouthed comedians saying things that today’s watchful parents would never let their 15-year old son watch while they napped on the couch. GenX, as they say, was raised on neglect. But VCRs helped.

So let’s look at this childhood poem, in all its innocence.

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on her tuffet
Eating her curds and whey

When along came a spider
And sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away

As a comedy writer, there’s a lot to work with here. I’m approaching this in a fashion that I expect will result in me accepting your accolades similar to Ralphy after he submitted his “What I Want for Christmas” theme.

As for Miss Muffet, I am drawn to how my understanding of her has evolved over the years. Because as a father, I get Miss Muffet now more than I ever did. Yes, she was frightened by a spider. So are a lot of people who don’t get poems written about them. But on a grander scale, she had it pretty good. As she sat there, on whatever a tuffet is, she was consuming a healthy breakfast of curds and whey. If you’re like me, you don’t know too much about whey other than that bodybuilders use it in protein shakes to help gain muscle mass in case they have to square off against powerful comedy writers. And let’s not infer that she was a body builder - even though that could have made her better prepared to deal with scary spiders. What I am saying is that whey is a good part of a healthy breakfast. And curds? Curds are just plain delicious. They’re like mozzarella sticks without the breading. You can eat them cold or melt them over buffalo wings and dip them in ranch dressing when you go on the Atkins diet.

Now, I didn’t always love curds. No one did. We never had them as kids. I didn’t even think they were real - they were just an old-timey food that didn’t exist anymore. I literally thought that Miss Muffet was consuming a tofu-like sour milk and the old-timey equivalent of a cereal no one ever liked. Shredded Wheat, probably. Because in my mind that was what they ate back then. But now I am older and more worldly. And curds are everywhere. They sell them in supermarkets and at local fast-food restaurants. Curds come from Wisconsin. They are a form of cheese, so where else would they come from?

With regard to Miss Muffet, we gain some insight into her nutritional consumption, but we remain left with more questions than answers. How old was she? Did she overcome her arachnophobia? Will anyone ever know what a tuffet is? These are mysteries lost to time. But the resurgence of curds as a vital food source today only helps to convey a deeper understanding that Miss Muffet is more than just a fairy tale. She faced complex challenges that are as understandable and relatable today as they were back in her day. And the real heroes are her parents. They provided her with nutritious meals, even if she was too much of a scaredy-cat to stick around and eat them. If the parents are the good guys in the story, does that make the spider the bad guy? Perhaps not. In fairy tales as in life, is fear not the real enemy?

No. It’s spiders.

One of the benefits of being a funny person is that you have ample opportunity to amuse loved ones when they are a captive audience and can’t escape because they are teenagers and you are driving them to school in the morning. This is the situation my daughter and I found ourselves in today. On these rides we get to connect one-on-one. I also get to stay on track with my New Year’s resolution to drive at least 10,000 miles per year. The car has never looked better.

Lately, driving her to middle school has come with an additional challenge. For the past four months we’ve had to take a detour around a road washout caused by heavy rains. I’ve been following the local community Facebook page and was happy to see our town mayor announce that the road would be open as of today. The announcement came accompanied by a celebratory road dance that appeared to be a public service message intended to demonstrate that high knee raises with under-the-thigh hand claps are not, in reality, a cool dance move. I’m not sure why the mayor felt that he should be the one to teach us this. If good dancing were a prerequisite for leadership, I’d be the one in charge of this town.

So this morning, instead of taking the detour, I proceeded along the normal, non-detour route. My daughter was quick to inform me that I was going the wrong way and that the road was closed ahead. Little did she know.

“Did I make a mistake?” I asked, knowing full well I didn’t make a mistake. Mistakes on my part are a rare occurance.

“Yeah, the road is closed.”

“Well, we’ll just have to figure it out,” I said, cleverly keeping up the ruse.

When we arrived at what used to be the road closure, cars were passing through in lanes sectioned off for coming and going. I proceeded through our lane.

“I called ahead and had them clear the road for us,” I told her. Bullseye. Classic.

“No you didn’t,” she replied, her dry tone signaling that she understood the joke but refused to give me the satisfaction of smiling. I decided not to push it. The joke landed. A win is a win.

We continued through our sectioned lane and, having hit my joke quota for the ride, remained mostly silent. We listened to Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo. Maybe tomorrow we’ll listen to some of her favorites.

As it turns out, by the time we approached the school, I was so wrapped up in ruminating about my successful “oh-no-we’re-going-the-wrong-way” prank that I missed the turn, effectively offsetting any time we gained by taking the non-detour route. What can I say? Ruminators gonna ruminate. I used to get called out in school for daydreaming. “Wouldn’t those teachers be happy to know there would be a much better word for it in the future?” I ruminated.

Since we missed the turn and I was low on gas, we stopped at a gas station with a convenience store. She wasn’t yet in school, but that doesn’t mean she can’t learn something. So I taught her how to pump gas. She did a good job and shouldn’t rule it out as a career. I gave her $5 for candy. I think she skipped breakfast, and I didn’t want her going to school on an empty stomach.

A quick turnaround put us back on the right path to school. The drop-off was uneventful. As she got out of the car she said something like, “please God get me the hell out of here.”

I think it’s a Taylor Swift lyric.

“I’d Like to Ski Her Dual Moguls”

This was from a group chat comprised of long-time friends of mine who know my comedic style, where we have a certain comfort level and, in private, are known to embrace inappropriate—but not unfunny—behavior.

One friend had alerted us to the fact that his neighbor’s daughter was competing in the Winter Olympics that day and would be going for the gold in the moguls competition. We all offered our kudos and support. This was done either via text or by remaining silent. Bro-silence is an important component of male communication.

This friend is an expert skier living in one of the most prominent ski towns in the country, and we were all genuinely excited to hear about this positive development. Who among us hasn’t been thrilled to be in the proximity of someone we know doing something great? When we learned that the neighbor’s daughter did not medal in the mogul competition but would still be competing later that day in the dual mogul competition, we championed her success. She was, after all, an elite-level athlete competing on the world stage. This, in itself, is greatness. It happens only every four years. One should not—must not—let the idea that there are both single and dual mogul competitions become a humorous distraction.

But, and this is crucial, men—especially funny men—are often uncomfortable with being overly supportive. It can be necessary to balance the emotional scales in order to reel conversations back in before they get too huggy and awkward. Not everyone understands this. And even fewer are willing to do what it takes: counterbalance genuine support and positive emotion with a groan-worthy cheap one-liner to remind everyone they are in a safe space.

I will let the reader construct in their mind how and when I took the reins of the group chat before we all started to feel—as the kids say—cringe. It’s more important to see that what followed—this little bit of crude humor—contained an important distinction. Because despite their athletic builds and skin-tight protective clothing, it’s not funny to sexualize Olympic athletes. But it is funny to compare moguls to women’s breasts. These are competing concepts that form the dual pillars of comedy: paradox and irreverence. We should not sexualize our athletes. So the person who does sexualize them in the name of preserving strong male bonds must be considered bold and triumphant. (The key is that the strong male bonds must be preserved. There is a fine line between being funny and just being a dick.)

Perhaps one day comedy will be an Olympic sport and gold medals will be given to comedy writers who truly deserve them. Until then, you can find me in the group chat.

“Thanks for the errand”

I said this to my wife today when she left my folded laundry on the couch, thereby forcing me to put it away before I could sit in my usual spot. It had originally been placed by her on another section of the couch and stayed there for almost a week. I suspect she would say that I was stretching the limits of her patience, overlooking the benefit I bestowed of strengthening her core resilience.

However, she was very likely growing weary of it being unseen for so long, or “ignored” as she has dramatically said so many times in the past. Perhaps this is what motivated her to put it more in line of sight (line of butt is more like it, hah!). Thanking her “for the errand” was a great way to graciously acknowledge the washing and folding of my laundry, while also not letting it go unnoticed that, in effect, she gave me a job to do.

You likely noticed that I was also referencing a favorite Jim Gaffigan joke in which he communicates that he is not actually grateful for a gift he received. This multi-layered contrast—acknowledgment, thanks, and ultimately being audaciously ungrateful—is the precise combination of factors that brings the spark, the joie de vivre, to an otherwise mundane evening.

What we see is a joke packing a double whammy—standing strong on its own merits while also referencing the social proof of having been originally spoken by a professional comedian. It’s like the joke belonged to me the whole time and Jim Gaffigan was just keeping it warm for me. Someone hearing it would have no choice but to laugh—otherwise what? Is Jim Gaffigan not funny? Implying that comes with its own set of formidable challenges—trust me, you don’t want to fight that army.

Nonetheless, my wife pretended not to be amused. In fact, she appeared visibly frustrated. I was able to dismiss these surface-level tensions, knowing that even though she wasn’t showing it, laughing on the inside is the same as laughing on the outside.

Like most of my jokes, once they have been spoken, there is little to do but let the humor work its magic.