Milt Abel is a stand-up comedian traveling the world, and places closer. Matched betting

posts

March 2024
M T W T F S S
« Aug    
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031

Recent Comments

links

Meta

[twitter-feed option="value"] [twitter-feed option="value"]

« | Main | »

Aging Magically

By Milt Abel | January 29, 2012

| January 29, 2012

Aging Magically

 

“Getting older: Whenever I start talking to myself, I wonder if I’ve already heard it.”

I posted that on Facebook about a week ago. I like to post something funny or lightly distracting on a daily basis; but I can be distracted easier than I can be distracting, and some days get passed by. The posts’ quality goes up and down, but good ones make me feel like I’ve accomplished something, and when you’re a self-employed solo artist, accomplishments need to be recognized -even when you have to boot up the computer and scroll way down a page to see them. Little victories.

 

What interested me about this post was that it was misconstrued. The comments that followed were mostly on the theme of senility.  I had intended it to be synonymous with the situation of an old couple who had lived together so long that they’ve said it all to each other already; they had run out of conversation. Saying that I had run out of things to say to myself sounded too pre-suicidal, so I changed the wording to infer a mild wonder. (I haven’t run out of things to say to myself, by the way, it was just a funny thought -that I shared with myself, and it goes out to everybody else from there)

 

It’s interesting that wonder among the old construes the detriment of senility, while among the young it’s an atribute. We wonder at each end of our lives and its merit is based on timing. I wonder why? Maybe I’m old enough that I should know by now.

 

I’ve tried that Facebook post onstage a couple times to mixed success. Last night at a gig in Hood River I tied it focusing on my original intention. Here’s a recording of my attempt -but I’ll include the previous joke about Hiroshima too, because it’s such a good joke

Hiroshima and getting older

I still didn’t nail it, and there’s still room for ambivilence. I also threw in another Facebook post about age: “I’m getting older and getter ear hair – you know why we get it? It’s there to filter out the crap we’ve been listening to all our lives. A third joke, almost tossed off, mentions that I get so much nasal hair these days I’d have tusks if I didn’t mantain it. That tusks joke was considered as a Facebook post but I refrained because of the ‘ewe-yucky’ factor, but when you get onstage you can get caught up in the moment and vanity gets moved down the list of your priorities.

 

Something magical happened during the show last night at The Pines Tasting Room. About 10 or 15 minutes into my set three ladies walked out as a group; of an age that showed they were definitely post-college but not yet established in their lives; mothers or career gals or a combination thereof. They walked out, not in displeasure of the show, they just gave a vibe of wanting to go and do ‘more’ for the night, evenly paced and raising enough commotion very everyone in the small venue and audience ( probably 60 to 70 people) to notice. I commented when they left about the large picture windows that surrounded me and most of the corner location “If we painted over these windows people might not know there’s an outside to go to.” It got a bit of a laugh.

 

Twenty-minutes later three ladies walked into the showroom, all evenly paced and looking very much like the trio who had left earlier, only they were probably two decades older. It looked so much like those three girls had stepped out, established their lives, and stepped back in that we all started laughing. I had to explain to these three why everyone in the room was reacting so energetically to an apparent innocuous entrance. I joked a bit about worrying what might be out there to cause such rapid aging.

 

They stayed for a few minutes and then made to leave, again as a tight, evenly spaced group and I had to stop my show and warn them….

wheelchair

 

I had a lot of fun. I performed for over an hour and near the end I announced that it was time for the show to end, and that we all had to step outside and start aging. Here’s that announcement.

out the door and older

Those of us that stayed didn’t get any older for an hour. A little victory.

 

Topics: comedy | No Comments »

Comments