I like to believe that my comedy appreciation growing up was more sophisticated than other teens or my peers: I devoured Firesign Theater after my introduction at fourteen (thank you, Uncle Peter), and I can state with some certainty that they were not on my classmates’ cultural radar.
[Surprisingly, I learned at college that a coworker from Keokuk, IA (?) not only knew of Firesign Theater, he and his buds could quote verbatim complete albums as people do Rocky Horror Picture Show or Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Totally shocked.]
In the late 1970s, Steve Martin was only known as a stand-up comedian and had released multiple albums of his live shows. On A Wild and Crazy Guy, he suggested a way to fuck with young children:
I got a great dirty trick you can play on a three-year old kid. See, kids learn how to talk by listening to their parents. See, what you do, you have a three-year old kid and you want to play a dirty trick on them, whenever you’re around them talk wrong. So now it’s like his first day in school and he raises his hand May I mambo dogface in the banana patch?
Absolutely loved it, so much that when my youngest sister was born, I proposed that we (the family) not speak to her and see how that impacted her growth.
Needless to say, Mom was not amused (there might have been a quick, wry smile) and quickly informed me that any attempts to use my sister for some cruel, mean, life-affecting experiments was not going to happen. And today, she is a normal walking, talking adult and musician.
