Jokes about loved ones

Two nights ago, my wife was falling asleep while scrolling on her phone, and I took a video of this thing that happens almost every night - she would fall asleep, I would try to take the phone out of her hand, and she'd wake up and grab the phone back and keep scrolling for about 3 seconds. Then she'd nod off and the whole process would repeat itself. I always found this funny and interesting, so I took a video and posted it on Instagram. In hindsight, I should have checked with her first, but I didn't. I thought it was cute and she'd find out the next morning and she'd complain to me in a playful naughty-naughty-you-shouldn't-have-done-that sort of way.

So far, no problem.

The next day, I had to go in to my office and my brother had a letter to pass to my sister. Ugh! So I drove to her place and passed her the letter. I feel like the relationship between me and my sister is a whole other thing that needs a lot of getting into but long story short, nothing I do will ever be right in her eyes, so I try not to let anything that she say get to me, but it always inevitably does. She has never said not to do comedy, but everything she says makes me want to just curl up under a blanket and die in my sleep. I'm not suicidal, but every time after I talk to her, I feel like everything is just overwhelmingly hopeless. I know she means well. She's always been sort of a parent since our mom died and even more in recent years after our dad died, but she's sort of like an Asian parent, you know. Everything is YOU BETTER BUCK UP OR EVERYTHING IS GOING TO END UP VERY VERY BAD, and to be fair, it's sound advice but it's too much for me because I'm an emotionally-damaged pussy.

So I pass her the letter and she asked if I had time for a chat, and she said by chat, she meant me getting chewed out. So my mind was racing - like "What now?" Turns out it was about the video I posted. To be honest, I was relieved. She said it was mean and wrong and asked if my wife was okay with it. I said yeah and excused myself to go fix my computer. But to be completely honest, I didn't really know if my wife was okay with it. I just assumed she saw it and she didn't say anything, and went about my day.

Then I felt bad. I was going to take my computer in for repairs but I decided to ditch that plan and go home to talk to my wife.

My wife said it's okay, but in a sigh-I-guess-my-life-will-always-be-relegated-to-being-a-joke-because-I-have-to-be-supportive-as-a-comedian's-wife sort of way which led to a conversation about my other jokes about her and then she went back to sleep. She wasn't feeling well. And then later she woke up and she said do whatever I want, I'm the comedian, don't listen to her, which is what she always says.

So I'm writing this now to sort out how I feel actually feel about doing wife jokes. Some of these thoughts I've had for awhile, so if I'm repeating anything I've written before, I apologize.

I have actually given thought to not doing wife jokes. Some of the greatest comedians, like Jerry Seinfeld, George Carlin, hardly ever mentioned their private lives in their comedy, so it isn't impossible. But I feel like I cannot let a story go. Maybe you can say it is because I don't have much else to write about and that certainly is true. But I truly feel that even if I did, I still can't let it go. I just don't like the idea that because private lives are supposed to be private, then nobody should ever write about anything private. I loathe this kind of thinking.

My wife is featured in the following jokes - My joke about how annoying it is that Whatsapp Calls want you to rate the quality of the call after you've had a bad conversation, my joke about how sex is weird because the two people could be thinking completely different things, how I have to scratch her back every night, my joke about how I say the wrong things in front of her, my joke about how I have to be her photographer and she's never happy with the photos that I take, my joke about how her favourite comedian is someone else.

Many of these jokes aren't about my wife, but she is featured in them. For example, the one about the Whatsapp Call. The real story of what happened was she was angry at me (for helping some tenants that she had fought with, but I was just trying to help them move some stuff and get them out of our house) so she called me and yelled at me. And then after she hung up, the phone said, "How would you rate this Whatsapp Call?" I thought that situation was funny, so I wrote about it. I did try writing her out of the story at one point and changed "my wife" to "my boss" but for some reason, it never got the same laugh it did as when I told it as it actually happened, so I changed it back. But ya, in telling this story, that opens up the fact that my wife does yell, but I assume she's not the only spouse on the planet that does, so I thought it's okay.

And the ones that are more closely about my wife, like the backscratcher story, obviously I can't write her out of it. What am I going to say? I scratch some random person's back every night? And it is a private moment between me and my wife, sure. But here's the thing - I think it is interesting BECAUSE it is private. In storytelling, there is a beauty to the ugliness between people and that intrigues me. Maybe I'm just old. I'm not really interested in the general woke glossy picture-perfect stories that permeates the current zeitgeist, or at least seems to on social media.

If it is something super non-private and non-taboo that everyone is willing to share because nobody gets embarassed, then people have already shared it to death. Like a story about how my wife goes straight to sleep, no backscratching, no playing with her phone, no sex. What if I told a story about that? It would be pointless.

Or a relationship where people are "normal" and never yell at each other. Is that a story? Maybe on Instagram. But you won't find it on my Instagram. That's not the kind of stories I tell. 

That's just not who I am.