JENNIFER BAKER: She reaches into her purse, and she pulls out one red onion.

"Mom, did you actually bring an onion from New Jersey to Chicago to ask me if I wanted it?"

JASON WEBB: It's a police officer.

I was like... (exhales) "I'm about to get a ticket for doing this dance?"

(laughter) STEPH DALWIN: My mom let me sleep with a knife under my pillow to scare away murderous Vietnamese ghosts and all of my friends.

(laughter) WES HAZARD: Tonight's theme is "The Funny Side."

Sometimes life is serious.

Sometimes too serious.

But when the tears dry, the dust settles, and the scars fade, we often find that these horrible ordeals are funny.

And when that happens, not only do we heal, but we grow.

Tonight, we're extremely fortunate to have an extremely talented group of tellers share their stories about the funny side.

♪ ♪ BAKER: My name is Jennifer Baker.

I grew up mostly in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

I now live in Northampton, Massachusetts.

I am a therapist, a marathon runner, I'm a mother.

I'm a voracious reader, and I am a lover of comedy and stories.

So you are a voracious reader.

I'm wondering what is your favorite genre and why?

I almost exclusively read fiction.

I have loved fiction since I was a kid.

I was an English major.

I love language, words, the way words are put together, stories, fantasy, being outside of one's own sometimes mundane existence.

When you share the story that you're going to share with us, what would you hope that the audience most takes away with them after they've heard it?

I hope they're just really laughing.

My parents crack me up, and I love sharing stories about them with other people because they just provide so much good material.

So I hope people just laugh.

It began with an onion.

I used to live in Chicago, and my parents live in Michigan, which is about four hours away.

So when they would visit me, they would drive, and I think they drove because it's convenient.

My dad also is an engineer and loves cars, so he actually likes to drive.

And my mom likes to drive because my mom loves stuff, and my mom likes to bring stuff from one place to another.

(laughter) A lot of stuff.

So when they would come, they would come with all the stuff, like their own pillows, their own pillowcases, their own sheets, towels, hair dryer, slippers, plus all the food they were going to eat for breakfast and lunch for the whole visit.

And anything my mother was concerned might go bad in her refrigerator.

(laughter) And a bag of stuff that she'd been collecting since I'd been there the last time that she swears are my items and I may need them and they need to be reconnected with me.

This could be really like one bobby pin or a CVS receipt for toothpaste from a year ago, because you never know.

So they'd arrive, and all the stuff would come into the house, and then we'd have to talk about the stuff, starting with the food.

And this is what my husband and I call "grocery show and tell."

(laughter) So my mom gets everything that's going to go into my refrigerator out one by one so we can, like, marvel at it together.

So it's like, "Oh, I got ten packages "of Sargento sliced cheese.

"I thought, you know, you might want five, "and Dad and I will eat five.

"And I have six kinds of milk.

"And look at these Trader Joe's sweet potatoes.

"They're tiny and they're organic and they were two dollars."

And it's like on and on and on.

So we get through that, and we're sitting at the table and she says, "Oh, Jenny, there's one more thing I want to ask you about," which is not true.

There are a million things she wants to ask me about.

She reaches into her purse and she pulls out one red onion and says, "Do you want this?"

"Aren't you going to eat it?"

"Oh, Dad and I don't eat red onion."

"So why did you buy it?"

"I didn't, Lisa did."

Now, Lisa's my little sister and she lives in New Jersey.

(laughter) And we're in Chicago.

And so I say, "Mom, did you actually bring an onion from New Jersey to Chicago to ask me if I wanted it?"

"Well, I wasn't going to throw it away.

I...

I thought you could use it."

Fair.

So at this point, I look at my dad, and they've been married now 52 years, so he's seen it all.

(laughter) Nothing happens on his face anymore, really.

And this doesn't either; there have been a lot of onions.

(laughter) Um, so...

The next morning, I go to the kitchen, and I find my mother elbow deep in the garbage disposal, which is dangerous.

Don't do it.

Apparently, my dad has cut up strawberries to put on his cereal, and she does not approve of the way he's trimmed them.

So she is, I'm not kidding, in there retrieving them, retrimming them, and then eating what she's trimmed... (audience reacts) and then setting the stems aside.

So I'm aghast.

And she just looks at me and scowls, and goes, "You and your father."

(laughter) Like we share the gene for subpar berry trimming.

(laughter) Again, I look to my dad.

Nothing.

Takes the scolding like a champ.

He just has the longest, slowest fuse, until he doesn't.

So I go down this long, like, Pullman style hallway we had in Chicago to tell my husband, "I just found Mom in the garbage disposal."

And that's a nice memory for everyone.

And on my way back, I catch, out of the corner of my eye, something in their room.

And it's a pile of dirty tissues around the garbage can.

Not in, but around.

So... "Mom, what's the story with the tissues?

Can we go ahead and throw them away?"

"I'm taking them home with me."

"You're taking your dirty tissues to Michigan?

We have garbage here."

"I know.

I'm going to compost them."

Okay, great.

That's... (laughter) That's great.

I look at my dad.

This doesn't cross the line.

So he's, you know, I guess, okay with it.

So... (chuckles) I'm back in the kitchen later that day, and I realize that-- or I notice-- that there's a bag now on the counter, so we can be composting.

Now, I used to compost, and my husband didn't like rotting food on the countertop.

I kept it outside, a squirrel got it, it wasn't good, so I stopped.

But my mother's in town, and she needs this.

So we're composting.

She needs to supervise the cleanup of all meals.

And this means that after we're finished, my father dutifully brings her the dishes.

She scrapes what she doesn't want to save into the compost.

Then she takes exactly one quarter of a paper towel and wipes the remaining oil or sauce off of the plate.

Puts that in the compost because it's biodegradable.

And only then is my father permitted to wash the dishes.

And inevitably, he screws something up, and she gets bent out of shape and yells something like, "Oh, just give it to me and get out of here.

"You're so unhelpful.

You're not a team player!"

(laughter) That's her, that's her new one, is they're on some kind of bizarre composting team, and he's, he's not... he's not a team player.

He's been cut and benched.

So, fast forward, it's time for them to leave, and now we get to do grocery show and tell in reverse.

(laughter) And here come the questions.

"Jenny, what about the almond milk?

Do you want it?"

"I don't."

"The kefir?"

"No."

"The Lactaid milk?"

"No."

"What about that one chickpea?"

"I doubt it."

"What about the Trader Joe's tomatoes?"

"They're rotting."

"The eighth of a bagel crust your daughter didn't eat last night?"

"I-- no, Mom."

And I'm trying to keep my cool, because this is very important to my mom, and I love my mom, and so, you know, I'm here for it.

But you know who isn't keeping their cool anymore?

My father.

(laughter) Milt is starting to have a reaction.

Milt is starting to pace.

And this is very interesting, because this doesn't happen very often.

So, I've kind of got my eye on him, and he's like, "Can we go?

Can we-- "(sighs) We've gotta go-- Come on, can we go?"

But grocery show and tell cannot be abbreviated.

So we're doing this.

But we're in the home stretch, and I'm like, I think we're going to make it, me and him.

And then, she hits us with the hammer.

"Jenny, um, what about the compost?"

And I say, "Oh, I'll just take it to the store where the farm comes to pick it up."

"Or we could take it home with us."

And before I can say, "Mom, do you really want "to drive a bag of rotting food in your car for four hours?"

my dad loses it, and yells, "No, no, no!

We're not driving the garbage back to Michigan!"

(laughter) And slams the door.

(laughter) And you know what?

They did.

(laughter) (applause) ♪ ♪ DALWIN: My name is Steph Dalwin.

I am from Boston, Massachusetts.

By day, I am a research analyst, and by night and in my spare time, I am a stand-up comedian and comedy producer.

And can you tell us about your journey into stand up?

How did that come about?

So, I took a stand-up class.

I didn't expect anything from it, but I just...

I loved writing.

I loved agonizing over the perfect line, kind of figuring out what the right word was for a punchline.

And the comfortability with the stage certainly took me a while, but I just fell in love with the, the craft.

So I understand that you are the co-founder of something called FODball Productions.

I'm so curious, what is that?

What do you do?

Please tell us.

A friend approached me one day and said, "Do you want to start an open mic with me?

"We'll have it, like, just for people of color, for femmes, for queer folks."

And I was like, "That sounds really refreshing.

Let's do that."

The name is derived from Shonda Rhimes.

The idea of being F-O-D: first, only, or different.

We started with a tiny open mic in an indie bookstore, and then that turned into a show, and then that turned into multiple shows across Boston.

And our ethos is still largely the same, you know, kind of supporting, highlighting, centering that historically underrepresented talent, because it's everywhere.

So I'm standing in the kitchen of my college dorm room, and I am panicking.

I've got eight people coming over in 20 minutes, and I don't have anything to feed them.

See, I promised them a big pot of pho, the beloved Vietnamese beef noodle soup.

And this should have been easy for me, like making a peanut butter sandwich.

I had seen my mom make pho thousands of times growing up.

The problem is, whatever I came up with didn't look anything like pho.

It was this sad pot of gray beef water, like... oh, God, it looked more like parboiled Martian.

And I have some good friends, because they ate it anyway.

But my God, I was so embarrassed.

Like, how could I call myself Vietnamese if I couldn't make the one dish that everyone knew us for?

There were times when I felt really disconnected from my Vietnamese heritage, and this was one of them.

See, I'm actually biracial.

My dad is Jewish, my mom is Vietnamese.

I grew up knowing a lot about Judaism.

I had a bat mitzvah.

I went to Hebrew school.

I wasn't allowed to eat bacon.

My Vietnamese side, though, all I really knew is that we dipped a lot of things in fish sauce.

And I had a lot of uncles and aunties who might not have actually been my uncles and aunties, but they always stayed for dinner and drank a lot of Hennessy.

(laughter) That night in my dorm room, I did something I hadn't done in years.

I went to the kitchen, I got a knife, I put it under my pillow, and I went to sleep.

Let me explain.

(laughter) When I was growing up, my mom actually used to sleep with a knife under her pillow, and she told me it was to scare away Vietnamese ghosts and evil spirits.

12-year-old me was fascinated, so I started doing the same thing.

Now, I didn't sleep with a machete under my pillow like my mom.

You know, I opted for a more sensible butter knife, but... (laughter) This knife was a portal to a whole other world.

It was a way to feel connected to my identity in a way that I otherwise didn't feel I had access to.

Eventually, I was discovered, but my mom let it slide.

She didn't care that I was sleeping with a knife under my pillow as long as it wasn't one of her good steak knives.

(laughter) It actually became something of a tradition between my mom and I.

Whenever I'd come home from college, she'd leave a knife for me under the pillow.

(laughter) A few years later, I'm a brand-new stand-up comic, and I knew I didn't want to talk about typical stand-up comic things-- you know, my dating horror stories or my unsolicited thoughts on above-ground pools.

I love those jokes, but they're not what I wanted to talk about.

I wanted to joke about things that mattered to me.

Stories from my life.

And I knew I wanted to write about this pillow knife.

I workshopped this joke for months.

I performed it in every dingy basement in the greater Boston area.

I felt like it was finally ready, and I wanted to show it to my mom.

She watches a video of me performing the joke, and she laughed.

But then she very quickly changed the subject to, "Why are you wasting time with stand-up comedy?

Where are my grandchildren?"

(laughter) That night, I'm sleeping at my parents' house.

I go upstairs to bed, I reach under the pillow.

No knife.

I fly downstairs.

"Mom, where's the knife?"

"Oh, well, honey, I just, I didn't think you liked it.

"I thought you were embarrassed of it, you know, because of that joke you told."

I was devastated.

I wrote that joke for her.

But in that moment, I realized I had aimed my joke at the wrong target.

Instead of aiming at myself, I pointed it at my mom, at my culture.

So, as painful as it was, that night, I got to work, scrapped the whole thing, and rewrote it.

More months of testing, more dingy basements.

I wanted my mom to see the joke again.

I actually invited her to a show.

I get on stage, I see my mom in the audience.

I start to tell the joke.

It went like this.

When I was growing up, my mom let me sleep with a knife under my pillow.

To scare away murderous Vietnamese ghosts and all of my friends.

(laughter) At this point, I look out into the audience.

I see my mom laughing.

I keep going with the joke.

You know, my mom actually called me the other night, and she was in a full panic, and she was like, "Stephanie, are you still sleeping with your ghost knife?"

And I was like, "Yeah, obviously.

I'm not trying to die."

(laughter) And she said, "Good, because Steph, "I had a vision that there was this ghost man "who was trying to abduct you and make you his ghost wife."

I know.

Isn't that crazy?

Someone wants to marry me?

(laughter) I don't know why I'm trying to scare him, I need to trap him, okay.

Forget the knife.

Tonight, under my pillow, you're going to see Heineken, Sports Illustrated, and half a sandwich, all right?

At this point, I finish the joke.

I look out into the audience.

My mom is laughing.

That night, I slept at my parents' house.

I go upstairs, I reach under the pillow.

The knife is back.

And it wasn't just a butter knife, y'all, it was a steak knife.

(laughter and applause) I had graduated!

(applause) Knives are typically intended to keep people-- and ghosts-- at a distance.

But in my case, a knife helped me feel closer to my mom, closer to feeling Vietnamese, and closer to feeling like enough.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ♪ ♪ WEBB: My name is Jason Webb.

I'm from Melrose, Massachusetts.

I run a headhunting firm with my wife, Carrie.

We focus on tech companies and go to market leaders within those tech companies.

We have two kids and a big dog.

And I understand that you also host a podcast, if I'm not mistaken.

It's called The GOATs of Growth.

Can you tell me a little bit about that and, you know, what led you into podcasting?

Yeah, one of my mentors, his name is Andrew Warner, has a national podcast called Mixergy, and I'd been listening to him for many years, you know, since 2007, 2008, when not a lot of people listening to podcasts.

And I realized it was a great way to just build relationships with people, you know, and, frankly, get all the answers to the questions that I wanted to have answered, because I didn't really know a lot.

So I figured I'd create a podcast that would not only benefit me, but also benefit other g... other people as well.

And so I'm sure you hear a lot of great stories on that podcast.

Is that for you, a good, a good source of just, like, entertaining, motivating stories?

Yeah.

I call it infotainment, you know, because it's, it's really good information, but told in a, in a way where it's inspiring.

Even if nobody was listening, it'd be like, my own private master class where I can just, where I'm asking the questions, I'm, like, co-creating the content.

♪ ♪ About five years ago, I'm sitting around the table in the kitchen with my wife and daughter.

My daughter is a dancer, you know, ballet, jazz, that kind of thing.

Now she's into street, and my wife looks at me and says, "Do you want to be in Jada's dance recital?

They're having a dads' dance."

(laughter) And I said, "Sure.

You kidding me?

Anything for Jada.

That's my girl."

So she's like, "Okay, I'll sign you up."

So about a week later, walking out of the house, looking for Jada.

"Come on, Jada, we've got to go to the rehearsal."

My wife looks at me, she goes, "No, no."

She's like, "She's not going.

They just want the dads."

I go, "Oh."

(laughter) I'm like, sounds kind of weird, but okay.

So, I go to the rehearsal, and there I am, standing in a room full of about 15 other dads, and it suddenly hits me.

I'm like, Jada's not going to be on stage with me.

(laughter) I'm like, I just signed up for a dads' dance without the daughters.

(laughter) This is not going to be cute.

I'm thinking it's going to be cute, It's not going to be cute.

Then I said, it's going to be ugly.

And then I said, even worse than ugly, it's going to be embarrassing.

I say, why is it going to be embarrassing, you ask?

Because as you can see, I'm a Black guy.

And there's a stereotype that has gone around that Black people know how to dance.

I'm the opposite of that stereotype.

(laughter) I can't dance.

So I knew I had my work cut out for me.

So this is about five or six weeks before the recital, and we practice I think twice a week, but I needed extra help.

(laughter) So I would come home after the rehearsal, maybe 9:00 at night.

I stand in my kitchen and I'd practice.

Everybody's in bed.

I'd be up in the attic, I'd practice.

Anywhere I could, I would practice.

So then, fast forward, the night before the recital, I still needed a little bit of work.

And I said, "Man, what am I going to do?

Because I was so used to looking at the teacher while we were doing our rehearsals.

But now when I'm on stage, I can't see anything.

So I texted one of my best friends.

I said, "Hey."

I'm like, "Do me a favor."

I'm like, "I need you to come watch me dance."

(laughter) I see the ellipsis come back.

Laughing emojis, like five of them.

(laughter) He's like, "What are you talking about?"

I'm like, "I need you to watch me dance.

"I'm in Jada's dance recital tomorrow and they have a dads' dance and I need to get it down."

He's like, "Okay.

Where do you want to go?"

And the only place that I could think to go was at our high school in our town, because it was dark, it was around 9:00 at night, thinking nobody's going to be there.

(laughter) It's off, off the street, it's a nice covered area.

So I'm like, let's go there.

So he's like, "Okay, cool."

Pick him up, drive over there.

And I have my phone, get out of the car.

I'm like, "Hey, man, just do me a favor.

I'm like, "Just watch this video "that we recorded during rehearsal "and just queue me up, make sure that I'm on point.

And if I'm not, you got to stop me."

Soon as I finish that sentence, car rolls up.

It's getting closer, and I'm like, "Oh, man."

I'm like, "Did you call somebody to tell them to come down to watch us?"

He's like, "Nope."

I'm starting to think, is it my wife Carrie, who's... wondering why I left the house at 9:00 at night on a Saturday without her?

Nope.

Car gets a little bit closer, it's a police officer.

(laughter) I was like... (exhales) I'm about to get a ticket for doing this dance?

(laughter) Officer rolls down the window.

I said, "What's up, officer?"

He said, "I was about to ask you the same question."

(laughter) I said, "Do you really want to know?"

He said, "Well, yeah, kind of.

It's after dark, and you're trespassing."

I said-- so I started thinking to myself, I'm like, well, if I tell him the truth, he ain't going to believe me.

And if I lie to him, well, not a good way to start a relationship right now, on a lie.

So I said, "Adam, give me the phone."

So he gives me the phone, and I put it in front of the officer, and I say, "Hit play."

He starts to chuckle.

(laughter) Looks up at me and goes, "Is that you?"

(laughter) I said, "Guilty."

He said, "What are you doing?"

I said, "Man," I'm like, "My daughter has a dance recital tomorrow, "and there's a dads' dance.

"I thought that it was going to be like "a daddy-daughter thing, where I was gonna be "twirling around and doing dips and stuff.

"But no, they got me doing a boy band dance.

(laughter) "It's the Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Boyz II Men, and New Kids on the Block."

(laughter) He said, "You know what?"

He's like, "That's all right."

He's like, "You can, you can continue.

You can do your thing."

He's like, "You have all that love for your daughter.

I really admire that."

I said, "No ticket?"

He said, "Nope."

I said, "Fantastic."

So then I said, you know what?

Maybe I can push my luck a little bit more.

(laughter) So I said, "While you're there, "you mind just sitting in your car "and keeping the lights on?

"Because I'm going to be on stage tomorrow... (laughter and applause) "With a whole bunch of bright lights "coming down on me, "and a whole bunch of people looking at me, and it's going to be a lot of pressure."

He said, "Wait a minute.

You want me to sit here and watch you do this dance?"

(laughter) I said, "Too much?"

He said, "No, go right ahead.

Sure, sure, sure."

(laughter) I'm like, "Okay, cool."

Give the phone back to my friend.

I'm like, "All right, man, hit play."

So he hits play, and I'm in front of him, and I'm doing my dance.

(laughter) I'm doing the New Kids on the Block skipping, I'm gyrating, I'm doing all kinds of movements my body that hadn't been done before, and I'm in my zone.

And then, after about ten minutes or so, I finally nailed it.

And I go, "All right, officer, thank you, I think I got it."

He's like, "You sure?"

I'm like, "Yeah, I think I'm ready."

He's like, "Okay."

He's like, "Listen, if I could be there, I would.

Cheer you right on."

(laughter) I said, "I wish you could, but you know what?

You've already helped."

So the next day, I show up to the recital.

It's our time to get on there.

I walk out.

All of a sudden, the music starts, lights come on, and I'm dancing, and I'm doing my thing.

I'm like, I nailed it.

I felt so good.

It was like the weight of the world was off of my shoulders.

It was like the longest four minutes of my life was finally over.

So, I come off stage, I'm looking for my family, I'm looking for Jada.

I see Jada, I'm like, "Hey, what'd you think?

Did you see Daddy?"

I'm like, "You proud?

You proud?"

And like any five-year-old daughter would say, she looks at me and she goes, "Eh, it was all right."

(laughter) But I know, because I saw that look in her eyes.

And I know that she was really proud of me.

And I know one thing.

I went back and did it again the next year.

(crowd goes "aw") Thank you.

(applause) ♪ ♪