Me? A comedienne? Sure, but...

Neither Snickers Bar nor Mars, Incorporated,
have paid Angela for her endorsement...
and that is a frickin', cryin' shame.

by Angela K. Durden
The Most Funniest Woman in the World

Citizen Journalist.  Novelist. Author of other stuff. 

Business writer.  Songwriter.  Protecting creator's copyrights. 

Unlike a lot of comedians who tell stories about their mothers and make audiences laugh, I do not have any stories about my mother that will make an audience snicker, much less guffaw.

Well, okay. I take that back. There are two. But these stories aren’t funny. They are…awfully sad. I mean very sad…and therefore funny in a sick kind of way.

So I’m not going to write about my mother here. In fact, I’m never going to mention anything about my mother because it just wouldn’t work. It would be…somehow…it would be a downer.

You don't believe me, do you? Of course, you don't because your mother says stuff that makes your workmates laugh. See, you could be a comedian. What a good mother you have, too. 

I'll prove to you how not funny these stories about my mother are. There are three stories. They all  involved men. One involved broccoli. Another, two varying opinions.

The broccoli story is so sad because my mother was around forty-five and been widowed for a few years. Had not been on a date. Then she went and was, according to her, wonderful and the man just couldn’t stop looking at her. When she got home and admired her brilliant self in the mirror, she found a huge chunk of broccoli in her teeth. She is 78 years old now and has never been on another date. Ever. 

So for 33 years she has eschewed man company because she was convinced he was staring at her broccoli all evening.

See? This is not a funny story. That’s why I’m not going to tell it to you. I envy all these comedians that can get up and tell these stories about their moms and I laugh and say, “Wow! I’ll never be a successful comedienne because my mother did not give me any good material.”

Truly, I despair.

The second story was told to me when I was fifteen, though it happened when I was in 5th Grade. Out of the blue, I have no clue why she would tell a fifteen year old girl this thing. Okay? She says, “Well, there I was, having sex with this guy in the motel room and he’s just a-going at it and finally he finishes and lays down beside me and says, ‘So, was it good for you, baby?’ Of course I told him he was so great and it was wonderful.”

Of course, I’m fifteen. What do I know about having sex in a motel room with a man I’m not married to? I know nothing and so I stare at my mother, speechless. She takes that as encouragement to finish the story. “Of course,” she says, “I was lying because…”

And here she holds up her hand and says, “...it was..."

Now, if I were on a stage, the audience — that is, you — would see me make a gesture wherein no words would be needed and everybody would know of what I speak. The gesture would be me holding up my hand with the thumb and index finger no more than two inches apart.

You're laughing. Stop it!

It's not funny. So, there is Mother, winking at me like I understand her dilemma, and I just want the hell out of there, so of course I nod. Anything to get away. 

Fast forward two years when I am seventeen. We're driving on a dirt road out in the middle of nowhere through scrubby pine forest, when we pass a rusted shell of a car. Painted on the side in large white letters is — 

BEER DRINKERS MAKE BETTER LOVERS.

My mother snorts and says, "They only think they do."

These are the three funniest stories my mother gave me. And that is why I cannot be a comedienne.