When I was a young girl, I watched Bill Cosby’s Himself comedy special. Maybe that was not the sentence I should have started with considering his fall from grace (which still hurts just a little bit that he turned out to be America’s favorite dad…with psychopathic tendencies. I digress. This isn’t really about him but about his job. He looked like he had so much fun on that stage telling stories that I wanted to do it as well. I wanted to stand on a stage and tell stories that made people laugh. Just to be clear, I only wanted to emulate the comedy part, not his secret double life thing. Except I wanted to do it better because he laughed at his own jokes. I would not. I would play it straight. I wanted to stand on a stage, tell jokes, make people laugh. That would be the perfect job.

Did I ever do that?

No. I’m what you would call a chicken. I have a poor memory so I’m pretty sure I’d get up there and forget everything. That is an excuse. Mainly I am a chicken.

So I never tried.

I told my niece one time while she was cutting my hair that this would have been my dream job. She listened and offered me some solutions for me to attempt to do this.

I decided I could at least try. Pass or fail, I needed to at least try. So, I sat down to come up with a routine of sorts. That’s when I discovered something about myself that I never realized before. One little thing is missing.

It’s not a fear of public speaking. I love the challenge of public speaking.

It’s not (as I always blamed) my lack of memory skills. I could work on a routine and come up with something.

It’s not my fear of failing. Although that is a huge aspect looming in front of me. But I’m at that point in my life when I figure, so what? I fully anticipate falling on my face, big deal.

It’s not the fact that everything I have read or heard about this profession is that I should expect a full 10 years before I get good. And I’m already old so that would make me quite old before I saw improvement.

No, none of that is my missing piece. I think I can handle all that and what I don’t know I can learn.

So, the only thing I’m lacking is actually humor. I’m not as funny as I thought I was. My stories are a bit dry and serious.

Do you think that will be a problem?