I thought of a line from a stand-up routine. I had to look it up to remember where it was from. There’s the line:
Richard Pryor: [whispering] Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. And I’m very happy that you came here. I would like to make you laugh, I would like to make you cry, I would like to make you.
And reading that reminded me of another thing that comes to mind occasionally, though I didn’t remember it was from the same bit until I read it.
‘Life’s a bowl of cherries.’ That’s what some pervert wrote. [laughs] Some guy hangin’ around a girl’s school, right? Y’know… In an old Ford coupe, [laughs] right? With a newspaper over his lap. [Mimicking] ‘Life is just a bowl of cherries!’ Yeah.
Years ago, before cellphones, I worked at a place where our department was next to Customer Service. All the customer service reps had beepers, which sounded much like the fry machines at McDonald’s, when the fries were ready. The reps didn’t wear their beepers all the time, and often their beepers were left on their desks while they were getting coffee or were in the washroom.
So if one of their unattended beepers went off, and wasn’t stopped, we’d all holler, “The fries are ready.” I still think “the fries are ready” when I hear the beeping of trucks or heavy equipment reversing.
I was out driving my stick-shift car yesterday and thought of Cosby’s routine about driving stick, where he hated first gear, second was not his best friend in the world, but third was fine - he’d run over someone rather than have to brake and start all over again.
