Performed 3/6/20 at Stand Up New York.
My parents are doctors. Total workaholics.
Our first family photo . . .
I was 45!!
When you’re parents are doctors,
they try to pass off medical conferences
—as family vacations!!
When I was 9, they took me on the
“No-Scalpel Vasectomy” Cruise!!
I didn’t get sea sick,
but touching fake scrotal skin makes me queasy.
Sometimes I get free stuff.
Like at the San Diego Psychiatric Summit
I got a pink Prozac frisbee!!
Mom read me bedtime stories
from medical journals.
My favorite part were the pictures.
They were pharmaceutical ads
of stressed-out mothers sedated on Valium with their little kids.
Looked a lot like me & mom.
Dad’s a compulsive hoarder.
He started with my baby teeth.
And it went on from there.
When I was 12, on Valentine’s Day, he gave me a Gold Godiva Box.
I thought it was chocolates,
but it was his gallstone collection.
Growing up with doctors as parents, nothing grosses me out.
When Dad picked me up from school
To get in the backseat of our car
I’m crawling over biohazard bags, Pap smear slides, and photos of colonoscopies.
When your parents are doctors they’re dealing with life-and-death.
You get no sympathy for childhood sniffles.
To miss school I’d have to be bleeding to death or on fire!!
My friend’s dad’s a surgeon—same story.
He gave her a suture kit for Christmas when she was 6.
She spent Christmas eve stabbing then suturing her dolls.
The way my Parents met is . . .
Dad needed therapy.
So he married his psychiatrist.
She diagnosed him as a narcissist.
Divorced him and took the kids.
His second wife thought he was much healthier,
she was also a psychiatrist.
She just diagnosed him as “severely neurotic”
. . . divorced him and took the kids.
After his second family left,
Dad closed his clinic and became a pathologist (that’s a doctor who does autopsies).
Finally found his happy place . . .
the morgue.
After the divorce I lived with Mom.
So in high school when I wanted my bofriends to meet Dad,
I’d take them to the morgue.
They wouldn’t stay long.
I’m like, “Dad what do you think?”
“He’s a nice specimen.”
Most parents have baby books and albums
with their kids’ school pictures, report cards, and awards.
I had a FILE.
It was entitled: “Child #3, Marriage #2.”
And in my file were photos of me with chicken pox,
a detailed log of all my injuries.
measurements of my scratches and bruises.
Basically Dad documented my life as a living corpse!!!
