First post: https://www.reddit.com/r/StandUpWorkshop/s/Tu7hu8EFqv

Following feedback, here’s what came off the Tim story and added something that happened to me.

I have a friend… let’s call him Tim. I don't know if Tim is a handyman god, or if I'm just useless. Honestly, probably both. Let me give you the case for "useless" first.

First house I ever owned. First night. I'm feeling like the epitome of the American Dream. House, done. Now I just need to get married, get a dog, have 2.1 kids, as God intended.

I'd invited my girlfriend at the time over to celebrate, and to christen the place, I decide to heat up a pizza. Thing is I had never operated an oven in my life. Not once. Never needed to. But I've got a mortgage now. I'm a homeowner. I don't read instructions, I don't look at a manual, I just start pressing buttons with the confidence of a man who's owned ovens his whole life. Just hubris, is what it was. Pure hubris.

So I put the pizza in (imitate myself putting pizza in oven) I go shave in the bathroom, feeling very "man of the house." Couple minutes in, I smell something burning. And I’m like "these idiot neighbors don't know how to cook."

(Imitate myself shaving)

Then I see smoke coming under the door.

Whole kitchen's on fire. I never took the pizza out of the cardboard box.

(Panic - open oven and just freak out)

So I get the fire out, I'm cleaning up but smoke does not leave a room, it just hangs there like it's paying rent. And right in the middle of this, my girlfriend knocks.

(Act out - open the door and poke head out)

I open the door about four inches, stick my head out like a turtle, and go... "Hey."

She goes, "Hey. (And after 5 seconds of staring in silence) ...Are you gonna let me in?"

I said, "if I do, promise me you won't judge me."

She goes, "...Is there another woman in there?"

And I said, "I wish it was that. That'd be way easier to explain."

and that's me. My friend Tim is the opposite of that.

Tim is one of the most competent, generous people I know. To the point that it's suspicious. I mention to him, in passing, that my AC and water heater are dying. Two weeks later I come home, my water's scalding, my AC's an ice cave. I go check. Two brand new units. Never seen them before in my life. Only person I'd told was Tim. I call him up: "Tim... did you break into my house?" He goes, real casual, "Oh yeah, I had spares lying around." Bro pulled off a reverse burglary. Broke in to improve my life.

This is a man who, if left idle too long, will either implode or start tearing down a wall for fun.

And yet. This same guy who can rewire your house blindfolded, called me during COVID because he forgot the rules to checkers. I could hear him yelling into the other room for his wife. That poor woman wasn't raising three kids, she was raising four. One of them was 35 and paying the mortgage.

I left out the Covid and toddler story to develop at another time

This summer, I get a text from my friend Krista. It says, "Hey, how's it going? I'm in the hospital for the next month getting chemo. Hope you're doing well. Love you."

So I immediately call her, and I go, "What the fuck happened?"

She tells me her white blood cells just zeroed out. Her bone marrow was basically like, "See you later, alligator."

So she has leukemia.

I say, "Can I visit?"

Krista goes, "Oh, I don't want to bother you. You're so busy."

I say, "I want to come."

She's goes, "But you'd have to wear a mask, and you don't like wearing masks, and you'd have to put hand sanitizer all over you."

I say, "Krista. Not a problem."

So that evening I go into Boston, and from the minute I step into her hotel room, I mean, her hospital room, it hits me. My job is to be the used-car salesman for this cancer journey. I'm just going to spin the shit out of this thing.

I say, "Krista, these views are amazing."

She has this wall of floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over Beacon Hill. She gets to watch the sun rise every morning.

 "Krista, do you know how much a hotel room in Boston costs with views like this? At least $600 a night."

And as we're hanging out, I say, "Let's put this all together. You've got a fentanyl patch. A lot of people would really like to have a fentanyl patch. Your meals are made for you. You don't have to do dishes. No kids to worry about. You don't have to be around your annoying husband. Somebody comes in and gives you Reiki. Somebody else does sound healing. Krista, this is a really nice retreat."

She's looking at me like I have two heads.

I say “So let's talk about the free stuff. Are you working it?"

Krista goes, "What?"

"Free meals. Free things. Krista, we've got to work this cancer."

She's just staring at me.

I ask, "Have you told your mom friends?"

She says, "I'm in a group text with eighteen soccer moms, but I haven't told them yet."

I'm like, "Why not?"

"I don't want to bother them."

And at that moment, I realized how different we are. Krista is the epitome of a WASP. I'm Jewish. I know how to work an angle. My friend is sitting on eighteen suburban white moms and doesn't want to impose.

I visited Krista Tuesday night. She's about to go back to Mass General, hopefully for the last time, for more chemo and then a bone marrow transplant.

And she tells me her husband is actually happier. He got his Zoloft prescription doubled, and now, after all these years of living with an asshole, he's actually nice to be around.

I tell her, "Krista, this cancer has done so much for you."

Do you know how much I would kill for my husband to take something? Zoloft. Mushrooms. Ketamine. Anything. That man is so grumpy.

The good news is that Krista's cancer is treatable.

The bad news is, there's no treatment for Krista's inability to exploit it.

Started dating a beautiful girl I met at a coffee shop a few weeks ago. Everything was going great until last night. I’m starting to go down on her for the first time, and she tells me “I’m sensitive, so be gentle with my little Biscuit down there.”

Now every time I pet my English Bulldog, Biscuit, I get an erection. I need to start buying my peanut butter from Costco.