The Birth of Comedy

Imagine you're sitting there in your cave talking to your friend, let's call him Bob, and he's sad because yesterday his father was stomped to death by a wooly mammoth, and earlier that spring his mother had been devoured by a saber toothed tiger. You're thinking about how things tend to happen in threes when you spy a large feral cat sitting at the edge of the firelight. Bob says, "Dinner has arrived." Then WHAM! the cat is on his face and he's' screaming, and you have a knee jerk caveman reaction, grab a club and beat the cat to death. In the process you hit your now blinded friend Bob three or four times in the head, and suddenly he stops screaming. Later you're picking cat meat out of the ten or fifteen teeth you have left with a little cat claw, thinking, "You were right, Bob. Dinner had arrived."  You hear a sound, Bob moves a little, pushes himself up and starts screaming again. So you hold some cat meat under his nose and he stops and eats.

Bob, usually such a chatty fellow, is not saying a whole lot right now. You can't stand to look at his eye sockets, so you get some wood chips and tie them in with what you've got--cat gut.

The next morning Bob has soiled his loincloth. You're mildly annoyed, but you take the loincloth and Bob and dip them in the stream. Then while you're standing on the bank drying in the sun, a twig snaps and Bob leaps into your arms. You've never held a naked man before. It feels pretty weird. The next morning Bob has soiled himself again. And this perturbs you. You suspect a pattern emerging, so you put him on a schedule. One morning you take him out and he doesn't reach for a leaf like one normally would. You say, "Aren't you forgetting something, Bob? I know you can hear me. I'm not wiping your ass, Bob." And you pick a leaf and hand it to him. And he eats it. You stick to your guns, but he keeps you up all night scratching his ass. The next day you hand him a leaf and he eats it again, so you do what you never imagined you would ever do. And now it's official: You have become Bob's caregiver.

You have to take fearful Bob everywhere. The two of you start to lose weight because it's hard to sneak up on an animal with an idiot hanging from your loincloth, tripping over logs and crushing pinecones underfoot.

After you've wiped his ass for the billionth time, you think, "I know it's my fault he's like this, but enough is enough." Then one day you find yourself leading Bob way up near the cliffs, and you don't even remember walking up there, but you're twenty yards away from the edge and getting closer. And then you stop and say, "I have to tie the thong of my sandal, Bob. Why don't you go on ahead? I'll be right with you." Of course, you're barefoot, but Bob doesn't know that.

Something makes you grab him before he goes over. You push him gently away from danger. But now you're on the edge. You look down. Far below clouds float past and birds soar above them. It looks so inviting. You get dizzy and start swaying, a light breeze on your back.

And that is the moment you hear a sound you've never heard before. You chuckle, and then start laughing, and suddenly you're doubled over, howling into the abyss.

Bob is laughing also (it's apparently contagious), and you give him a big hug, and later, after you get back to the cave, you think, "I have to share this with other people." You invite the neighbors over, and they come, a miserable horde with sores on their bodies, missing fingers and toes. They're emaciated, hungry or starving. They're only going to live to be 25, 30 tops. But while you talk to them, they smile and laugh and look at one another as if for the first time. They are happy, even if only for a short while.

And people come from all around to be entertained in your little comedy cave. And they start to bring you things: Worthless trinkets made out of sticks that today would fetch eighty million dollars on Antiques Road Show, which you stupidly use for kindling. And homemade soap and fermented berries, and dried meat and dried fruit and dried shrunken heads, and large soft leaves treated with oil. And you become a wealthy man by caveman standards. And then one day you wake up and you know this will be the best day of your life, a glorious day, a beautiful day, a magical day, for on this day you hire a man to wipe Bob's ass.