This post isn't as much about humor as it is about talking about my past and going over the events of it and how I internalized everything in order to explain what has led to me thinking and acting the way I do now. My goal on this one is to be interesting (with elements of humor sprinkled in here and there because honestly I can't help myself).
TL;DR: After floundering about for a few years, I realized that I'm an addict and my drug of choice is praise from others.
Elementary school: In the beginning...
I was born in California into a highly religious Mormon family with five other siblings, with me being #3 in the lineup. My mom was sweet and patient, but raising 6 kids with little hands-on help will take its toll on any person. My dad was a very hard worker, with the incredible ability to just buckle down and work for an insane amount of time in order to get a task done. He was a venture capitalist and was gone a lot. He worked long hours for many years. Today, I have good relationships with both my parents.
There's not a whole lot to say about elementary school. It was easy and fun. I was popular. I had lots of friends and I was well-liked. I was confident, I was always picked first for the kickball team, I was in the 'gifted and talented' program. I was a 'cool kid'. Plus I was the best at Connect Four.
Many people refer to others who "peaked in high school" as losers unworthy of their time. Lucky for me, though, I didn't peak in high school; I peaked in elementary school.
Middle school: In the middle of the ride
Then middle school happened and that's when I noticed a great change in myself. I began to withdraw from basically everything. Whereas before, when I considered myself the natural king of all my social circles, almost as if overnight, I now had a tough time fitting in (often with the same kids I once had no problems interacting with). I gained a lot of weight and didn't feel comfortable in my own body (but honestly, who does in middle school?).
I stopped trying in school - not out of laziness or anything like that, but just because I... couldn't? It was like someone messed with the dials on my radio of life - everything was still powered on and working just fine, but I just wasn't getting a signal. I found myself just kind of floating from day to day, dreading the next more than the previous.
One highlight is that in my 6th grade English and social studies class (called 'core'), the teacher decided it was appropriate to blatantly give up on me and a few other kids in the classroom who weren't performing well. She grouped us all up and had us sit at the same table, and would refer to our table as the "gas pumper table" (because that's all we would ever amount to). None of us were disruptive or anything like that, yet she seemed to get sadistic pleasure from taunting a bunch of under-performing 11-year-olds and "putting us in our place". And now that I think about it, the kids sitting at that table with me were probably the smartest kids in the entire grade. I imagine their circumstances weren't unlike mine. We were all running on V8 engines, and the road was clearly laid out in front of us. We just lacked tires.
I would later go on to show that teacher a thing or two, though. Instead of becoming a "gas pumper" as she so condescendingly predicted, I went on to become a gas station manager. So HA!
Looking back on that time of life, I was showing so many early warning signs of mental illness, I'm surprised no one caught on. But this was at a time when mental health awareness wasn't what it is today, so... shrug.
I was so miserable, I began to think about killing myself. I knew I wasn't ok, but I was afraid that if I brought up my problems with my parents, my problems would either get minimized in the way of me being told I needed to toughen up, or I'd get in trouble and be punished. And I already spent a lot of time in trouble.
I would write what were essentially unambiguous cries for help on some of my school assignments and then turn them in, secretly hoping that someone would read them, become worried, and intervene. Only a couple instances were discussed with me. Nothing was done. I don't think the school counselor or anyone of that nature were ever contacted. I think they just wrote me off as an edgy preteen, but the cries for help were genuine and to this day I wish that some kind of intervention had been performed. For the sake of example so you can understand what I was doing, I once wrote all over one assignment for my 7th grade biology class "DEATH TO ME, DEATH TO ME, DEATH TO ME..." over and over in the margins of the assignment. I remember as she was passing back the assignment, the teacher lingered at my seat a little longer, gave me a disappointed look, and gave me my assignment back. She had marked off an extra 6 points and left a comment that simply read "unprofessional behavior". I showed it to my parents. They agreed with the teacher.
Of course, now, I realize that all of this detaching from reality that I was doing was a result of a predisposition to mental illness and multiple angles of abuse in my life, but I didn't know that at the time.
I spent a long time trying to figure out what I needed. What could make me happy again? Maybe if I could just figure this out myself, my problems would go away? After a lot of introspection, I realized that I needed to be praised; I was happiest when being praised. So I started looking for something that I could be praised for.
Later in life, when learning about concepts like 'Love Languages', I learned that my love language by a freaking mile is 'words of affirmation'. Giving me words of affirmation (things like compliments and verbal expressions of affection, or explaining why that affection exists) is like ramming my face into a kilo of cocaine and making me inhale deeply.
To this day, if you've ever given me any kind of meaningful, heartfelt praise, I probably remember you and you show up in the highlight reel from whatever time of life you were part of.
A bit of a tangent, but I've noticed that praise is very rare in our world, and requesting praise from others is frowned upon in our society and viewed as selfish and insecure, whereas asking for a hug, or asking for someone to spend some time with you, or asking someone to do something for you -- those things are generally rewarded.
This means that I couldn't simply ask for my needs to be met. In order for my needs to be met, I needed to be praiseworthy.
So I set out to stand out for something in order to garner the attention and praise of my peers. And I decided that that 'something' was going to be humor. I wanted to be a funny guy.
And I studied comedy. It took me years until I felt like I was able to be a self-proclaimed 'funny guy'. I listened to standup routines repeatedly that I had downloaded from Napster (to this day, I could probably rattle off Dana Carvey's Critic's Choice set word-for-word, or Jerry Seinfeld's I'm Telling You For the Last Time). I attended local comedy shows put on by high school students. I payed close attention to the structures and syntaxes of different jokes and repeated them over and over until I had fully dissected what made particular jokes funny.
But knowing what makes a good joke, and applying the principles of a good joke in order to form your own jokes are two different things (like how analyzing what Shakespeare is saying, and writing in convincing Shakespearean language are two different things). It would be some time until I had figured out how to smoothly stitch jokes together.
I took up interest in improv and standup. But there was no middle school comedy group. The closest I could get to such a thing was the Drama II class.
In 8th grade, I auditioned for and was accepted into the "Drama II" class (skipping Drama I, which I felt really cool about at the time, but now I realize that it was because I was a boy and the teacher desperately needed more boys in the upper class, not because I was talented in drama). In that class I got a taste for performing comedy for an audience. Hearing people laugh and cheer for me was like stabbing 20 adrenaline syringes directly into my depressed little heart. I wanted more; I needed more.
I’m loving it!!
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