Okay, I had to go to sleepaway camp...
every year since I was 6 years old.
And, uh, it was terrible for me
because I was a chronic bed wetter till I was, like, 15.
So, it was a nightmare.
I learned a lot of skills, like complete disassociation.
[audience laughing]
Making a cot over soaking-wet sheets while I stink like piss
and pretending like that's not the case.
What kind of parents would send a chronic bed wetter to sleepaway camp?
They must be monsters. No.
They're not monsters.
Here's the thing. Okay.
Like, my dad...
his dad beat the shit out of him every day.
And then during the school year he was sent away to goyim.
To boarding school. I'm sorry.
[audience laughs]
To boarding school.
And then at boarding school...
he got the shit kicked out of him every day,
called a dirty Jew kike,
because it was back when, like...
America was great.
[audience laughing]
And...
-And then in the-- All right. -[audience clapping]
[chuckles] That was pretty good.
[audience laughs]
And then in the summertime,
he went to camp and blossomed
and was a star and was, like, everything he wanted to be.
And so, parents, they just think--
You know, he just thought, "No, camp is great.
It will define her. It will be her joy.
Because that's what it was for me." You know?
So, I had to go to camp.
And as a compromise, he would give me joke books.
Because I loved jokes.
And then, also, maybe I'd make friends that way.
So, I remember the summer I was 8
because I had just learned to read when I was 7.
Someone in the audience when I was in Vermont was like, "I was 4."
Fucking good for you. I was 7.
I learned to read when I was 7.
So, I was 8, I was excited.
I had books. I was gonna read.
And my dad has no boundaries.
I don't know if he flipped through these at all or didn't.
Um, but it was Truly Tasteless Jokes book one and two.
[audience laughing]
And I remember the first joke on the first page.
It was a paragraph long, but I can tell it in two seconds.
It was "Little Red Riding Hood, blah, blah, blah.
And then the big bad wolf is like, 'I'm gonna eat you.'
And then Little Red Riding Hood's like, 'Eat, eat, eat.
Doesn't anybody fuck anymore?'"
And I'm like, "What does this mean?"
[audience laughing]
Then when I was 30 I was like, "Oh, Jesus Christ.
That's so inappropriate."
He was, uh-- My dad isn't-- He has no boundaries.
He's not approp-- I don't really--
He-- He treated us like bros.
Like, um, I remember one time when I was really young,
he and my mom went on a double date.
And when he came home, he, like, plopped down on the front hall--
There was, like, a bench in the front hall.
And I was sitting there, and I asked him how it went.
And he was like, "Oh, it was the fucking worst.
Uh, we were supposed to go out with the Sterlings,
and then only Mr. Sterling showed up.
Because he said Mrs. Sterling had her period.
And when she gets her period, it comes out like liver.
And I'm like, 'I don't need to know that.'"
[audience laughing]
I was like, "Dad, I get it.
Like, I'm 5, and I don't even need to know that."
But my dad, um...
Camp was where he thrived.
And, like, they're still his best friends to this day.
His best friends are his friends from camp.
And he's about to be 80, and they're having a reunion, even.
And he has a picture of all of them, uh, when they became counselors.
And it's amazing. It's from 1953.
And I said, "Dad, you have to send me this."
And he sent it to me with, like, a glossary of who everybody is
and what they're doing now. And it's like:
"This is Phil Holman. He's a judge now.
This is Arnie Goldstein.
You know, he owns Martin's House of Cloth.
This is Danny Gold.
Danny Gold once gave Punchy Kramer a BJ and we all watched.
This is Cy Schwartz.
He works at the Clam King.
This is bah, bah, bah. He da, da, da.
This is Morris Simon.
This is Punchy Kramer.
This is, you know, blah, blah, blah."
I'm like, "Dad, open with it or close with it."
He has no sense.
[audience laughing]
So, he went to camp all the way up until he became a counselor.
And, uh, you know, we think of counselors, like, as grown-ups.
But, you know, they're 16-year-old kids.
So, for each camper, he had to fill out a form,
uh, every week for each camper.
And it would say, like, "Is he behaving?
Is he sleeping? Did he brush his teeth?
Did he go to the bathroom?"
And under that it said, "L/H."
And my dad didn't know what that meant.
But he was too embarrassed to ask anybody.
So, he just used his logic, and he's like, "Okay.
It comes after bathroom, so it must mean...
'loose or hard.'"
[audience laughing]
So, for a summer...
[audience laughing]
my dad had his campers come get him...
after they took shits...
so that he could go look at them...
and make a rough guesstimate...
if it was indeed loose or hard.
I love that so much.
It just means there's, like, a generation of old men in therapy...
who are like:
"Well, I did have a camp counselor that was, like, obsessed with my shits.
Is that...?"
You were sexually abused.
[audience laughing]
Oh, it meant "letter home."
[audience laughing]
But thank God he didn't ask.
That would have been so embarrassing.