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By Robin Raniero Norris

I am a woman who has officially sunk into the belly of midlife. There are a lot of firsts going on for me, but the one I fight the most is my need to use reading glasses. I own “a” pair and when I can’t locate them, I try to fudge the universe a bit. But sometimes, the world laughs back at me and my feeble attempts to see unaided.

I attended the fantastic workshop for comedy writers at the University of Dayton inspired by the wonderful writer, Erma Bombeck. A flurry of emails came into my inbox leading up to the conference. Sometimes I had on my glasses to read them, other times I tried to view them by squinting, skimming, and plugging the words into the Speechify app so it could read them to me.

I wanted to embrace as many events as I could absorb. When an email included: Would you like to go on the bus tour? I replied, “Yes!” Any dietary requests? “No.” And so on. When an email came through about a Comedy Show, my answer was, “Yes.” Because, I truly thought the email was asking about attendance for the event seating head count.

Two weeks after my “yes”ing and “no”ing an email about the final lineup for the Comedy Show was in my inbox. I was sitting in the car outside my daughter’s baseball practice scrolling and reading where the comedians were from. "Neat, there’s one from Powhatan, Virginia." "Oh look, there is another person from Virginia." "Wow, and they are from the same town as me." "Huh!" —  I slid my finger to the left to see this person’s name because how cool another Erma lover in my town. And there it was. Robin Norris. Never ever did I realize that I was saying "Yes" to the possibility of having my name entered into a drawing to perform a stand-up act.

Quickly I went through the stages of grief and was panicked enough to show the email to a friend who so wisely got me to the acceptance stage because I had certainly wanted to say, “No.” But she convinced me that I was not going to say, “Nope" even though diving out of planes and swimming with sharks is much less scary to me. I was going to face the thing that freaks me out more than anything else in life, “public speaking.”

And so, I did. A whole 3 minutes’ worth. I was supported by the incredible Jane Condon and a troop of 17 other outstanding comedians. We all spoke and sang our truths to a room of 250+ people to bond over laughter. And as you see, I survived to write this tale.

When asked if I would do it again — the truth is, it’s too early to tell if this will be like the one and only marathon I ran. Who knows? I might do another act in the future. But for right now, I am just enjoying the comedic high and am forever grateful for Erma’s words, “I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, “I used everything you gave me.”

Saturday evening has certainly challenged me to make sure that I am squeezing out my abilities down to the core. The only thing I want left on my bucket list by the end of my life is — simply the bucket. And even then, I would hope to give it one last kick before I go.

—Robin Raniero Norris

Robin Raniero Norris is a Virginia-based writer and first-time in-person EBEE attendee. As of this post, it's official. She now writes more than case notes and email replies to graduate students. She enjoys life with her family and can be found through www.wind-opt.com if you feel like saying hello.