Since I don’t play well with others, stand up comedy has been calling to me for the last 22 years. It took me a few years to get good at standing up, but after I got the hang of it, I was unstoppable.

Stand up requires very little actual skill to complete, if you take it at its most basic definition, but it is difficult to do well. It is often observational comedy, which requires little more than a cynical outlook and a mostly functioning brain. Obviously, this easily accessible nonsense is my bread and butter. More obviously, I am not super impressed by its merits as an art form. More on my deep and abiding self-loathing later.

Like most accidents, observations happen in the home. How many restaurants are featuring acts tonight who are going to talk about their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and other horrible childhood memories? Some may branch out and discuss their terrible love lives, but most are telling basically the same story, plus or minus some variations at bedtime.

So we come to the major obstacle keeping me from the mic: my comparatively immense concern for the feelings of my family and friends, who, like most humans, are unintentionally hilarious. I’m pretty sure everybody in Los Angeles is anxiously awaiting their chance to hear about how my 60 year old father’s favorite movie is Mouse Hunt, and that my sister, whose diploma says she has a masters in early childhood education, once chased us—three younger siblings entrusted to her care—around the house with a knife, merely for being “brats.”

They’re the embodiment of comedy, yet somehow I can’t reconcile exposing their humanity for my gain, even if I could be making upwards of three free drinks for each performance. The stakes are high, but is it really worth gambling the love of my family? I mean, Emily hasn’t chased me with a weapon in years, and she even let me hold her child for a few minutes this Christmas. That’s love, right? The possibility of losing that familial warmth makes this an undeniable dilemma.

For the moment, I’ll hold off on taking to the stage and continue hoping that the inanimate objects in my house will begin threatening my life so I can exploit my sisterless experiences of terror for free drinks.

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