Dear Journal,

Over St. Patrick's Day weekend I performed in my hometown of Boston and I decided to go on one of those historic orange and green trolley rides. So I walk up to the booth in front of the trolley and fork over $39 for the ticket and then I hand my ticket to the driver and he says, "This ticket’s not for this trolley. It’s for that trolley.” Then he points to this old beat up silver trolley with plastic windows. I felt tricked, but I didn’t know who to blame. I wanted to go up to the ticket booth and say, “Excuse me but I didn’t realize you were selling tickets to the sucky trolley.” But I figured that if I went back, the booth itself might stand up and run away like in the cartoons.

So I sat on the sucky trolley and the whole time when everyone was asking the tour guide questions about Bunker Hill and Sam Adams all I wanted to ask was where to buy tickets for the good trolley.

That night at my show a bunch of my childhood friends showed up. They’re always quick to point out that I’m “the least funny kid they grew up with.” And I’m the first to admit that I was never the class clown in school. The class clown was always the mean guy who walked into the room and said, “You’re fat! You’re gay I’m outta here!” I was always a little fat and a little gay.

They’re also quick to bring up the most embarrassing story of my life. It’s called The Old Mill Pond story. When I was in the eighth grade, my friends invited me to jump out of a tree into Old Mill Pond. So I’m standing in a tree 30 feet above the ground with my three friends and they’re like, “Jump, dude!” And I look down at the water, which was so far away and I said, “That doesn’t seem like a good plan.” And they said, “Dude, we already jumped, it’s no biggie.” I looked down and then I looked at them and I said, “Well, I feel like I know myself pretty well, and this activity doesn’t play to my specific skills,” which, by the way, include making English muffin pizzas and dipping them in hot chocolate. They were like, “Dude, what’s the worst thing that could happen? It’s just water.”

There were many things wrong with that statement. The first is that many bad things can happen with water…shark attacks, drowning, bad sex. For me it was the way I landed—because two things occurred simultaneously. The first was that my back was angled in such a way that its impact on the water created a clapping noise that sounded like a gunshot. It also felt like a gunshot. The second thing that happened was that my butt was angled in such a way that the water rushed so far up my ass it came out of my mouth. It was like an extremely comprehensive colonoscopy administered by Dr. Old Mill.

I don’t know if I’ve ever questioned friendships the way I did that day. But we’re still friends today. Maybe when people see you violated by a pond, they feel like they owe you something. I may not have been the class clown, but I took 7 gallons of water through the wrong hole. In the long run, that kinda stuff wins you points, but not enough points for the good trolley.

And that concludes this week’s entry in my secret public journal.