So we call the contest’s headquarters together. Let them know that I, Jamie Grimm, am officially withdrawing from the competition taking place this coming Saturday afternoon at the Laugh Factory Comedy Club inside the Tropicana Las Vegas hotel.
Yep, six days away from the biggest performance and audience of my life, I quit.
I also make all Little Willy Creme’s dreams come true.
Because by dropping out of the competition, I’m giving him my slot.
Chapter 56
SATURDAY NIGHT DEAD
Saturday night at the diner, we change the channel on the TV from the ball game to the big show out in Las Vegas.
All my friends and family are clustered at the counter, sipping sodas and nibbling French fries.
“You okay?” Gilda asks when I lock my wheels and stare up at the plasma screen mounted on the wall.
“Yeah. I just wish Uncle Frankie were here.”
“Me too,” says Stevie Kosgrov, hustling out of the kitchen with a tray loaded down with plates of food. “This meat loaf weighs a ton!”
Yes, even Stevie is pitching in and waiting tables. If you don’t give him a good tip, he hangs out at your table, cracking his knuckles, waiting for you to reconsider the error of your ways.
“Frankie’s watching it at home,” says Mrs. Smiley, gesturing with her cell phone. “Says none of these kids will be half as funny as Jamie Grimm!”
The whole diner erupts with applause.
“Jay-mee! Jay-mee! Jay-mee!”
I soak it up for a few seconds because it feels great. But then I see Ray Romano come on the screen.
Oh, man. One of my all-time favorite stand-up comics and TV stars is the host of the semifinals. The TV audience is cheering for him the way I would. Hey, everybody loves Raymond.
“Thank you, thank you! Thank you so much! Oh, man, I’m not that good, I don’t think. Let me just say, I can’t tell you what a thrill it is to be hosting the Planet’s Funniest Kid Comic semifinals!”
More applause.
“First I have to say hi to my kids at home. Hi, guys! Okay, go to bed! I have four kids. One daughter, three sons. And you know what? I don’t care if you laugh or not. I’m just happy to be out of the house.”
After a couple more jokes, Romano explains how we’re going to see “sixteen incredible kid comics” tonight—the top two from the eight regional competitions. Next, he introduces the judges, who are—drumroll, please—Robin Williams, Ellen DeGeneres, and Chris Rock.
Wow. It’s like my personal Mount Rushmore of stand-up comedy.
On the outside, I’m smiling. Inside? I’m weeping. I can’t believe I came this close to meeting four of my comedy idols out in Las Vegas.
Gilda sees my lip quiver a little. It’s hard to keep smiling when you feel like screaming.
“Next year,” she whispers.
I nod.
Next year.
If there is a next year.
Chapter 57
I GUESS THIS IS THE END
Judy Nazemetz, the comedian who was nice to me in New York and Boston, kills big.
In comedy, killing is a good thing.
She slays the audience. Has them rolling in the aisles.
Ray Romano even comes up to her at the microphone after her set to personally congratulate her. Robin Williams gives her a standing ovation. Ellen DeGeneres is so thrilled, she’s dancing. With Chris Rock.
Near the end of the hourlong show, Little Willy Creme comes on in what would’ve been my spot and basically bombs. Nobody in the TV audience or the diner laughs at any of his material. Not even Vincent O’Neil.
“Hey!” says Vincent. “He stole that doctor joke from me!”
When Little Willy is done (as in burnt toast), Ray Romano comes back onstage holding an envelope. He is ready to announce the “eight comedians moving on to Hollywood” for the finals.
But first, the offscreen announcer has to tell us how the kids heading out to Los Angeles will be the stars of a one-week reality TV show.
“Our Planet’s Funniest Kid Comic camera crews will follow our nine finalists around Tinseltown as they prepare for the biggest performances of their young lives!”
“Wow,” says Romano when he comes back onscreen. “You kids could become stars and make a ton of money. In my house, my wife gets all the money I make. I just get an apple and clean clothes every morning.”
Everyone laughs.
Romano rips open the envelope and reads a list of eight names.
Judy Nazemetz is moving on to the finals. Little Willy is not.
Music starts. The announcer says something like “Join us in two weeks for…”
I aim the remote at the TV. Snap it off.
I don’t want to hear any more about everything I could’ve had.
If I do, I might have to check myself into Uncle Frankie’s old ICU room. Because my heart is breaking.
Can I tell you guys a big secret?
This is just between us, okay?
All I ever wanted was to be in the finals of the comedy contest. I didn’t need to win. But I needed to show the world that no matter what life tossed at me, I’d figure out how to laugh my way through it.
I’d also like to maybe, someday, have a chance to walk again.
And I thought being on TV, maybe landing a talent agent and booking a couple of paying gigs, might give me a shot at the walking thing, too. Let’s face it—operations and medical miracles cost money.
Well, anyway…
Zero out of two isn’t so bad, right?
And I’m sorry my story has such a lousy ending.
Chapter 58
THE MIDDLE SCHOOL COMEDY CLUB
On the way to school Monday morning, Gilda Gold has an “amazingly awesome” idea.
“You should do your Vegas act here!”
“Um, Long Beach doesn’t really have a comedy club.…”
“So? You can do it at school. And since you missed your shot at performing on TV, I’ll video the whole thing for posterity.”
“Gilda, they’re not going to just let us put on a show in the school auditorium. You have to ask for permission and fill out forms.…”
“We don’t need the auditorium!”
Gilda has that look in her eyes again. Her big blues look like two swirling whirlpools of excitement. She gets this way whenever she has one of her “amazingly awesome” ideas.
“We’ll stage it in the hallway. We can borrow that cordless microphone from the chorus room. Pierce can rig it up to an amplifier. That’s all you need, right?”
“Well, sometimes there’s a spotlight.…”
“The drama club adviser is a pal. She’ll let us borrow it. We’re good to go.”
“Mrs. Kressin? Seriously?”
“Totally. You have your material ready to rock, right?”
“Pretty much,” I say. “I was ninety percent locked down the day before Uncle Frankie had his heart attack.”
“Well, you have all day to polish your routine. Showtime isn’t until five minutes after the final bell.”
When we reach the schoolyard, Stevie Kosgrov and his two hench-buddies, Zits and Useless, are waiting outside.
“What are you two geeks gabbing about?” he sneers.
Gilda props a hand on her hip and gets right in Stevie’s face. “Jamie’s doing his act. Today. Back hallway. Five minutes after the final bell.”
Kosgrov narrows his eyes. Glares hard.
“Who’s handling concessions and souvenirs?” he asks.
“Nobody. Not yet, anyway. You want in?”
“You bet. My profit margin on the whoopee cushions is phenomenal. Need to make a few calls. Maximize the merchandising…”
Yep. Not only has Stevie become a C-minus student, it sounds like he’s ready to run for president of Junior Achievement.
During homeroom, Gilda and Pierce do up a pretty cool flyer for the show.
By second period, I see it plastered all over the school. It’s on ev
ery stall door in the bathrooms. There’s one on every tray in the cafeteria. Gaynor’s good with a roll of tape.
In the afternoon, Gilda and some of her friends turn the back corridor into a middle school replica of the Las Vegas strip, complete with blinking lights from the janitor, who dug a couple of strings from the school’s holiday supply out of his closet.
When it’s time for the afternoon announcements, the vice principal, Mr. Sour Patch himself, invites everyone to “join us after school for a command performance by the funniest kid on this or any other planet, our hometown hero, the one and only Jamie Grimm!”
When the final bell rings and school is over for the day, nobody races out the doors. They pack the back hallway, where Pierce and Gaynor have set up the cordless microphone and spotlight. Gilda is standing by to video the whole thing with her smartphone. I can’t believe the size of the crowd. Even the school bus drivers have come inside to catch my act.
This may be my biggest audience ever.
“Wow,” says Vincent O’Neil when he sees the packed hallway. “It’s every comedian’s dream come true. Someday I hope I can perform for a crowd this size.”
I smile. “How about doing it today?”
“What?”
“You can be my opening act.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope. Go on. And, Vincent?”
“Yeah?”
“Have fun.”
He races off to grab the mic. And you know what? He’s not half bad.
“Folks, coming up here I bumped into Stevie ‘Knuckle Sandwich’ Kosgrov, who, thank God, just told me that the last thing he wants to do is hurt me. But it is still on his to-do list.”
Not bad at all.
Chapter 59
THE BEST AFTER-SCHOOL ACTIVITY EVER
Vincent does about five minutes of pretty funny stuff.
The crowd is all warmed up when it’s time for me to go on.
“Yo, it’s time for the main event,” Gaynor shouts into the microphone when Vincent’s set is done. “Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Jaaaaaay-meeeeee Griiiiiiiiiiimm!”
I roll out to the center of the hall and grab the mic.
“Thank you,” I say as the crowd cheers. “It’s good to be in Long Beach. As my friend Joey Gaynor said, I am Jamie Grimm. Great name for a comedian, right? Grim. Which, of course, means gloomy, grisly, and grumpy—put it all together and you end up with a group of very sad dwarves. Snow White would’ve had a real blast if she’d ended up in our hollow tree.”
I move into some school-related material.
“Just finished cramming for my semester exams.” I get a round of recognition applause. Everybody in the hallway was in the same boat.
“I am sooooo glad all that useless information is finally out of my brain. What happened in 1853? I don’t know. Some guy fell off his horse. What? You think that’s the wrong answer? I’m betting that somewhere in 1853, some dude slipped out of his saddle and ended up on his butt.”
I do a little bit about the rhombus and the Invasion of the Trapezoids.
I tear up Madison Avenue and joke about advertising. “Have you seen this commercial for toilet paper? A bunch of bears who, you know…go… in the woods are hanging out in a bathroom, encouraging us to ‘enjoy the go.’ Seriously. That’s the tagline. Enjoy the go. Since when did toilet paper become as much fun as a trip to Disney World? Wait. Don’t answer that.”
I tell the crowd what I enjoy: “Tearing down the open road in my uncle Frankie’s Mustang convertible. There’s nothing like it. Really. The wind whips through your hair, unless, you know, you’re a gym teacher and all you have is head stubble.
“For me, it’s like sticking my face under the hand dryer in a bathroom. My cheeks end up somewhere behind my ears. There are bugs in my teeth. More than usual. I have to floss constantly. And you can’t really hear any music in a convertible, no matter how loud you crank up the tunes.”
I explain that in my uncle Frankie’s car, this can be a good thing.
“He listens to doo-wop music all the time. From the 1950s. What were people thinking back then? I mean, who writes lyrics like that?”
I recite a line from the Chords song like it’s serious poetry:
“Sh-boom sh-boom.
Ya-da-da.
Da-da-da.
Da-da-da.
Da.”
Then I toss up my hands.
“Am I missing something here?”
I make a crack about Warren G. Harding’s middle name and Millard Fillmore saving us from French surfer dudes in Hawaii. “They’d call their baggy shorts ‘baguettes.’ ” I discuss picking a girlfriend based on how easy it is to pronounce her name.
And then I move on to my big finish.
It’s time to talk about the eight-hundred-pound gorilla sitting in the hallway.
My wheelchair.
Chapter 60
BRINGING DOWN THE SCHOOLHOUSE
I roll my chair forward a couple of inches.
“So the other day, this lady says to me, ‘Excuse me, young man. What do you like to be called? Handicapped, disabled, or physically challenged?’ And I said, ‘How about Jamie?’ ”
The crowd chuckles. So I smile, to show it’s okay. I know I am in a wheelchair and that my legs don’t work.
“Now, as you guys can probably tell, when I’m in the Chair, I’m something of an outlaw.”
The crowd laughs in disbelief.
“No, it’s true. I break the law several times every day. Usually on my way to and from school. Seriously. You know those blinking lights on every corner? I never, ever walk when they tell me to.”
More laughs as I take off on a riff about the big red hand and the sideways-walking man.
“He looks like a guy escaping from a Lite Brite board. ‘Sorry. Gotta go.’ He just cocks his LED arms and hikes off. ‘Enjoy the go, sir.’ Man. He makes it look so easy. I wish I could do that.”
I flex my hands so everybody can see my leather driving gloves.
“You’re probably wondering why dudes in wheelchairs sometimes wear racing gloves. Is it to protect our sensitive hands from the rough tire treads and stench of rubber? Nah.” I look from side to side like I’m about to reveal a deep, dark secret. “We do it because it looks so cool.”
“It sure does!” shouts Cool Girl, who, of course, is in the hall.
I smile. Pretend to be super-cocky. “The rest of you guys? You’d look like total dorks if you walked around school all day wearing racing gloves. Me? I look cool.”
I grip both handles, hard.
“Me and my wheelchair,” I say like I’m a cheesy commercial announcer. “I’m in it for the parking.”
The crowd cheers!
“I’m Jamie Grimm, and you guys have been a great audience! Thank you, Gilda! Thank you, Vincent! Thank you, Stevie, Pierce, Gaynor, and everybody else whose names I’m forgetting right now. Long Beach, I love you! You’re better than Las Vegas! Now go see those trained Siberian tigers in the science lab!”
Nobody wants to leave.
Some want me to sign their whoopee cushions. (Stevie shoots me a thumbs-up; the merchandise is definitely moving.) Most just want to shake my hand or pat me on the back or tell me what the funniest thing I said was.
Vincent O’Neil is one of the first in line to congratulate me.
“Thanks again for letting me go on, too!” he says.
“Hey, you were funny.”
“Maybe,” Vincent says, displaying yet another human emotion. This one looks like modesty. “But, Jamie? You were—and always will be—a bajillion times funnier!”
Gilda shoots me a wink and taps her smartphone. She recorded the whole thing.
Gaynor and Pierce are being congratulated, too. I guess for being my buds. Good. They deserve it.
Sitting in that corridor, soaking up the buzz and the love, I realize how lucky I am. To have so many good friends. To have had this chance to make them all laugh. To still have Uncle Frank
ie.
Hey, I really can’t afford to lose more family members anytime soon.
Did my spur-of-the-moment performance in the back corridor of Long Beach Middle School feel as good as it would have felt to perform on that stage at the Las Vegas Laugh Factory in front of Ray Romano, Robin Williams, Ellen DeGeneres, and Chris Rock?
Nah.
Not even close.
But still, it was very, very cool.
And I am one very, very lucky guy.
Chapter 61
ENCORE PERFORMANCE
I’m feeling so good, I don’t want the day to ever end.
“You were hysterical,” says Gaynor. “I wish my mom could’ve been here.”
A lightbulb goes on over my head. I get an idea, too.
“Where is she?” I ask.
“Home. Probably in bed. She wasn’t feeling so hot today.”
“We should go pay her a visit. Do a repeat performance.”
“We can’t. I mean, you can’t. Her immune system is still pretty wiped out from all the chemo. She’s not supposed to see people for a few more days.”
“Well, does she have a computer with Internet?”
“Yeah. A laptop.”
I turn to Gilda. “How soon can you upload your video to YouTube?”
“How about now? Why?”
“Laughter is the best medicine, remember?”
Gilda smiles. “Give me like an hour. It’s a big file.”
Gilda and Pierce hurry off to the computer lab. Gaynor heads for home.
Me? Well, I just hope Mrs. Gaynor likes jokes about Millard Fillmore, doo-wop music, and bears pooping in a bathroom instead of the woods.
Because, as I learned the hard way, laughing can make you feel great even when you don’t.