The Stand Up

Christmas dinner can be an awkward and intense moment for families. A monarch like Henry VIII might be attempting to rejoin sects of his family, bitterly divided from him beginning the Reformation. Alternatively it might be the more humble example of a brother and sister that live on either side of town, reacquainting themselves again after having little to see of each other during the year.

A moment of history had drastically altered Christmas plans for the Rayson and Bismarck families. Both families were relatively young. The siblings David and Lucy each belonged to one of these families and they both had two kids each aged between six and ten as well as one baby. In Melbourne, Australia where both families lived, the city had reached what many regarded to be the tail end of the COVID19 pandemic for the region. Many were looking forward to what they believed would be a reasonably normal Christmas, a celebration of life as it was after a year of social isolation, confinement to home, unstable employment and panic buying. Not to mention the cheating of many out of their right to live. But the promise of a return to normalcy does not remove preexisting unhappiness.

Happy or not family customs have a way of continuing and the Rayson-Bismarck Christmas stand up comedy show was no exception.

Sibling rivalry was the primary concern of David and Lucy growing up. Both had had very different interests. David was a keen athlete, doing golf and tennis and a swimming championship here and there. He also had the unusual hobby and talent of clay sculpture. By sixteen he was creating very good plasticine replicas of Baroque statues by the likes of Bernini. He even had a front page feature in the local paper that their grandmother still had framed. An early conflict between Lucy and their parents involved David being provided with his own studio space for sculpting while Lucy was not allowed to travel to the concert of a band who has long since stopped making albums and its members having done their fair share of appearances in Dancing with the Stars and The Bachelor Celebrity Edition. 

Lucy had embraced all things Goth, her isolation was celebration for her. Unfortunately it began a vicious cycle. Her parents thought the best thing was to let her do what she wanted to do so long as she was not causing immediate harm to herself. The logic was to not force her into something she was not, lest she dig her heels in on principle. What caused problems was when Lucy came to the consideration of why did her parents seem to not care for her. She might be in black but she still loved them.

Around the time of seeing an episode of Seinfeld on the television in their grandfather’s hospital room when they were seventeen and eighteen respectively both David and Lucy began the unusual step of showing an interest in the same thing. After the funeral they were both putting in their best efforts to become stand up comedians. The last few months of them attending school together involved a couple of appearances on campus talent shows. This did not mean that their approaches to comedy were the same. Their work methods continued to show their chalk and cheese approach to life. 

David approached comedy like a sculpture. He approached his jokes like a well-crafted thing of beauty. Occasionally he would release impromptu lines that would get swells of laughter from the audience, but he generally preferred small reliable laughs that he could build up on bit by bit like a brick wall. Although she maintained her black clothes and make up Lucy may as well have worn a clown suit as an emblem of her gift for improvised goofiness. 

Long story short neither sibling ended up making it on the comedy circuit. But when their kids began to get wind of what sounded like cool and nifty exploits of their parents in the world of showbiz they wanted to begin doing their own performances. Eventually these efforts extended into Christmas time and little stand up gigs for little comedians had become the order of the day in place of acting out the Nativity. Lucy and David’s parents and their grandmother enjoyed giving a good clap to the children’s efforts. In the summer of 2020 this was not to be a standard performance as both their grandparents and great grandmother were still social isolating. A pack a day tradition amongst themselves meant they knew they were especially vulnerable to a pandemic that targeted the lungs. The older relatives therefore would experience the show via webcam. 

The grandmother of the family was surprisingly effective at mobile technology. She did not even text anymore but mostly communicated by Instagram messenger. But desktop computer operation continued to be a problem for her and it was a high likelihood that she would have trouble logging into the Skype meeting to hear the show. All fears were in vain though. She never ended up having to use the email link. 

David, the oldest of the children, was ten and it was felt sufficient to leave him in charge of the younger children except for Lucy’s baby son William who was only six months. Lucy brought baby William with her to the hospital. David was brave and smart and knew why things were happening as they were and said to the other kids that the show must go on because they were professionals and professionals do a good job no matter how many are watching. Jenny the youngest aged only six was the first to perform. She and Tim, the two youngest children, performed just as well as if there were a cheering audience. Michael the second oldest, aged eight and three quarters, did not perform as well as he thought he could. Although he did not know why something did not feel right. David did not feel right to tell Michael otherwise because he did not know what to say and although he felt bad taking the easy way out he knew he technically had the excuse of ignorance of why they were there alone on Christmas Day.