Jolyn Young

I’ve wanted to try my hand at stand-up comedy for six years, since I first realized it was a thing that people besides Chris Rock and Kevin Hart could do. But living on remote ranches and in cow camps made it pretty tough to even consider going to an open mic, plus I was terrified and too scared to even imagine myself actually standing on a stage and saying coherent words.

A couple years ago I dared myself to say out loud to the world (well, in a text to a close friend) that I wanted to try stand-up comedy. Her reaction was positive. I started keeping a journal of jokes, fragments of stories, and things that I thought were funny. I protected that journal like it was a secret map to a lost gold mine, because I would have been crushed if someone read it and said it was dumb.

Then one day, I left my comedy journal on the kitchen counter. Jim picked it up and read a few pages. He later told me some of my one-liners were pretty funny. I was encouraged and started posting short videos online. Some people told me they were entertaining.

Then I published a book and people wrote to tell me they laughed – and cried, but let’s focus on the laughter for now. I was encouraged enough to tell Jim I wanted to sign up for an open mic at the comedy club in Tucson. He said sure, he’d go with me – he hadn’t had his nose broken in a while and figured he was about due. I told him he was not allowed to beat people up in the parking lot just because they heckled me onstage. I also reminded him he was not allowed to heckle me onstage.

Then Jim left on a cow contract, as per usual, and I really didn’t want to go to a bar and tell jokes to drunk people all by myself. So, I emailed a local guest ranch and told them I wrote a book that might be suitable for their gift shop and oh by the way, I was now offering live comedy performances.

Much to my surprise, the manager emailed me back to say he was interested in learning more about my performances. So, we scheduled a show.

And then I thought, “What the heck did I just do?! I’ve never done an open mic before, but I just booked a paid comedy show as the headliner.” 45 minutes seemed like an awful long time to entertain people with my comedic abilities for my first time onstage, so I broke it down into two sections: 25 minutes of comedy and 20 minutes of showing pictures from our cow camp days and remote ranch life with fun commentary.

Then I spent two weeks writing a comedy show, helped by my husband’s developmental feedback, Ross Hecox’s editing expertise, and my dad’s confidence-boosting pep talk hours before the show. I spent one week memorizing my act (4,100 words! In seven days! My brain hurts!) and performed it for the first time last night.

Both people in attendance thoroughly enjoyed the show. Just kidding – there were actually three people there, but only two enjoyed it. The ranch had a mix-up when posting the schedule, so my act was advertised as “Captivating Critters.” The people who showed up thought they were attending a lecture on desert wildlife. The two women were delighted to realize it was a comedy show instead and laughed the whole time. They really carried the audience, because the third attendee looked like he was really into the Critters show and wanted to leave the whole time but was too polite to get up and go. I thought about telling him he could leave, but I didn’t.

I remembered my whole act (seriously, my brain still hurts) and even paused for laughter. Every time the women laughed, it threw me off, because I had been practicing my act to the dogs and horses, who did not once laugh.

It took six years to work up the courage to do my first stand-up comedy act, and let me tell ya – the reward of hearing people laugh at a joke I carefully crafted was worth pushing through all the self-doubt and voices in my head telling me I’m too old, too mom-like, or too unfunny to be a real comedian.

I don’t have any pictures from last night, because my kids stayed with a babysitter and I drove up alone. Lesson learned: always bring a friend to snap a pic and boost the audience numbers by one-quarter.

But looking forward, now, it’s time to revise, refine, and get ready for the next one. The sky’s the limit at this point. Who knows – maybe my next audience will reach double digits.