Initiating the excavation of our attic a couple weekends ago (there be dragons), I was forced to reckon once again with all the plastic storage tubs in which Mom lovingly slash compulsively packed away just about every artifact from my childhood. The dozen or so tubs which I’ve been methodically sifting and editing ever since we emptied the old house a few years ago. 

Recently I cracked open one tub particular that made me giggle out loud — a container of books from my elementary school years. The vast majority of which were procured during all those epic (epic, I say) Scholastic Book Fairs of yore. I can still conjure the feeling of exhilaration of slow-browsing the tables on Book Fair days and having the agency to choose my own adventures. 

It was such a genuine feeling of capitol “T” Treasure hunting. 

The archeological evidence suggests that, through grades 1-6 I trafficked exclusively in four genres: sports, monsters, dinosaurs, and these beauties. 

Hello old friends. 

My younger self memorized each and every one of these. Front to back, cover to cover. 

What a gift it was (is?) to be reminded. 

I don’t think my younger self loved anything more than making people laugh, with the possible exception of the Six Million Dollar Man (the two-part Bigfoot episode? SWOON.)

These books were my training wheels before I graduated to committing my brother’s Steve Martin albums to memory. (Cruel Shoes, anyone?). 

Digging deeper into the tub, I was reminded that those books were also responsible for me landing my first and only stand-up gig — in the 6th grade.

I remember Mrs. Shaffer summoning me to her room over lunch one day. Though I didn’t have Mrs. Shaffer for class, I was among the quivering majority that was profoundly afraid of her. She had a booming, eviscerating yell that echoed in the hallways of Hatfield Elementary, easily traveling across the hall to strike second-hand fear into those of us in Mr. Gibel’s class. 

Duly summoned, I remember knocking on her classroom door, and she motioning me to stand next to her desk.

Gulp. 

First thing outta her mouth … “People say you’re funny.”

I mean, what does a sixth-grader do with that?

Impatient with my stunned silence, she phrased it in the form of a question: “Are you funny?”

Mrs. Shaffer didn’t play.

I remember managing a sheepish, “Depends on who you ask, I suppose.”

Heck … all I knew was that I loved aiming at the target … had never paused to consider how good I was at hitting it. 

I loved bringing fresh caches of knock-knocks to the dinner table, loved trading jokes with Dad while riding around in his Sherwin Williams van (his humor veered heavily towards cornball), loved practicing Steve Martin bits when no one else was around. 

I’m not sure there was any greater music to my young ears than laughter produced from thin air (aside from maybe the theme from the Six Million Dollar Man). 

Mrs. Shaffer went on to explain that she was planning a country and western theme for her big annual spring musical. For context, Mrs. Shaffer wasn’t the Busby Berkley of Hatfield Elementary. Busby Berkley was the Mrs. Shaffer of musicals. She then revealed the reason for my summoning:  she was looking for someone to tell jokes — ‘Hee-Haw’-style — in between the numbers. (It was the 70’s y’all.) 

I’m pretty sure she didn’t really ask me so much as assigning it like homework — one didn’t say no to Mrs. Shaffer. All I know is that, upon the asking I was all-in. 

First order of business was to pick a partner. I went with my heart and picked Dan — my first best friend — as my straight man. It would be our first appearance on stage since we performed an avant garde rendition of “Rhinestone Cowboy” before our kindergarten class, during which Dan strummed the guitar he didn’t know how to play, which helped distract the class from our forgetting most of the words. I am still in proud possession of the vivid memory of us walking home from Areford that afternoon on a cloud. I remember turning to Dan — his six-string still loaded on his back — and saying, “We’re gonna make it BIG.” 

Alas … if such was ever to be our elementary school destiny, it would be in comedy, rather than song. 

Next came the work of crafting our set list. This is what I’d trained for. I meticulously culled troves — troves, I say — of comedic gold from my vast library of joke books, sourcing supplemental material from teachers, family and friends. 

A sample forever etched in memory:

Pete: You ever been to a hula dance?

Dan: What’s a hula dance? 

Pete: It’s when they put one crop of hay in the front field, and one crop of hay in the back field. And when the music starts … they rotate the crops. 

Ahem. 

We prepped a program’s worth of such material (which Mom, of course, saved) …

… which we unleashed on an unsuspecting audience while standing between corn stalks in front of the stage where classmates offered their pre-pubescent renditions of Hank Williams’ “Hey Good Lookin’’ and Johnny Cash’s “North to Alaska.”  As an aside, my favorite number was the Anne Murray banger, “Could I Have this Dance?” … where I won the lottery by being paired up with Julia Pudowkin (DOUBLE SWOON), who lost her side of the lottery by having to hold my sweaty hand for three minutes and 17 seconds .

While I do recall having to leave some of our best material on the cutting room floor (f*cking 6th grade censors), I remember some of our stuff killed. Remember the indescribable feeling of making an entire room full of adults laugh. Can still conjure the sound of it echoing in our booming cafeteria with the basketball hoops wheeled to the corners. To this day I can hear it as clearly as Miss Shaffer’s booming voice across the hall. 

And even when the jokes fell flat, I remember instinctively dead-panning or double-taking to coax laughs from the ashes. Thanks to Steve Martin for teaching me a thing or two about timing. 

While my vague recollection of our performance brings to mind the old Dennis Miller line, “I haven’t seen choreography that stiff since the Lee Harvey Oswald prison transfer,” I don’t think we were all that bad for a couple of 11-year-old Rhinestone Cowboys. 

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A question that often gets asked — I’ve often asked it of others — is, “If you could go back, what advice would you give your younger self?” 

While a worthy question, it’s based on the assumption that our older selves have the market cornered when it comes to wisdom. 

But there’s another question that maybe doesn’t get asked as often as it should. 

“What advice would your younger self give present day you?”

Having spent the better part of the last couple weeks in conversation with my younger self, I have a pretty good idea what elementary school Petey would tell grown-up Pete.

Which I actually thought about a couple weeks ago … when everybody was happy around the table, pushing nine o-clock on a Thursday night, after Karry blew out the chubby #1 birthday candle Peter had improvisationally fished from the drawer behind him and balanced on the heavenly angel food cake that she’d brought back from work a couple pieces light  … after she paused for a couple good seconds to ensure she got her wish just right, making me smile that she took the time … after Peter revealed how he’d picked the eau de parfum he’d gotten her — the way he said PAR-fooooom — from the locked case at Marshalls, scent unseen because “the Internet said it smelled good ….” 

When in that moment …  I made everyone laugh … the spark catching the kindling perfectly … oxygenating everyone’s genuine cackles … their hands-off-the-wheel-let-go laughs … their heads-back-I’m-gonna-pee-myself laughs … 

… which left me savoring the sounds like white icing from my fingers  … as Karry wiped tears before turning to her next gift as I received hers  … in the reminder that there is no greater feeling on earth than being responsible for coaxing her glorious and singular Only Karry laugh from thin air. 

That feeling. 

And in the ashes of that moment, I caught a glimpse of my younger self … walking home from Areford on his kindergarten cloud. 

Finally caught up to him, I should say. 

Tapped him on the shoulder and let him know that I’d been listening. Told him I hope he didn’t mind my eavesdropping.

I just wanted to let him know that he was right.

We made it big.