Ahhhh. .. Much Better

For the last 3 years my buddy , Kris Earle , and I have volunteered to tend bar at the Charlestown Working Theater annual benefit. It's fun to spend time together , we are a good bar team , and we make about $20.00 in tips. Tony V usually assembles a great line-up and it's an all-around good feeling evening. Most of the volunteers come back year after year, so there isn't a lot of explaining to do . We all sort of remember what the deal was from the year before and that helps to make things run smoothe.
Kris and I usually tend the bar upstairs for the food portion of the evening and then we run the bar downstairs during the intermission. We hand off the drinks back and forth. The people who attend the event are really nice. Their kids participate in the plays and programs at the theater. It's a real community evening . The food and liquor is donated by local merchants.
So, Tony offered to have me do a set. I had 10 minutes. Ten minutes in front of an audience that wanted to laugh and were paying attention. A packed audience. It was liberating !I didn't talk too fast. I opened with joke I thought of today. "I had onion rings at lunch today and I got one in my eye. I had a crumb stuck in my eyelid for an hour. How does that happen ? I guess that truly is an eating disorder". Maybe it's not Bill Hicks caliber, but it was new and it helped me focus. It will be a good joke some day, it's mostly there. . . and it is true. And then I did the rest of my regular material. I did wander in the middle of one of my jokes. It wasn't particularly funny, but they were with me and then I eventually got to the end and I felt really good about it. Lenny Clarke said "great job " to me . .. I gotta say. . . That was really cool !
Kris and I were talking afterward and he said that wandering in the middle of my set is a kind of trademark of mine. I've done it before . I'm sure I do it regularly in conversation, but I have no recollection of it. Usually , when I wander in the middle of my set, it rattles me and I have a hard time getting back to where I was going. However, tonight I was able to get myself back to where I wanted to be.
All in all it was a nice little surprise for me to be performing in front of such a great audience. Tony V seemed really happy with the show . He did agreat job of putting it together(If I do say so myself !) It was a good evening and a good show.