Absolutely — here’s a tight, conversational 3-minute stand-up routine with no pun-based humor:
I’ve reached the age where going out requires a staff meeting with myself.
Not even a real event. Somebody texts, “Hey, want to grab drinks Friday?” and suddenly I’m in negotiations like I’m representing a small country.
“What time?”
“Who’s going?”
“How loud is this place?”
“Is there seating, or is this one of those places where we all just stand around clutching our beverages like disappointed flamingos?”
I miss when I was younger and “going out” meant I had energy and bad judgment. Now I have neither. Now I need a full recovery plan. If I go out Friday, Saturday is gone. I’m not hungover, I’m just emotionally overdrawn.
And why does everyone act casual about plans? People say things like, “Come through.”
Come through? What am I, a fog? Give me an address and a chair.
I do like how as adults we pretend we’re flexible. We’re not flexible. We just lie politely.
Someone says, “We should do dinner sometime.”
That sentence has killed more plans than distance.
Nobody means “sometime.” “Sometime” means “I want this conversation to end on a positive note.”
You can tell how much someone likes you by how specific they get.
“We should hang out sometime” — acquaintance.
“We should get dinner next week” — friend.
“I made a reservation for Thursday at 7” — terrifyingly organized person. Possibly a cult leader.
I’m also bad at restaurants now because there are too many choices. Every restaurant wants you to build your own meal. I don’t want to build it. If I wanted responsibility, I’d stay home and deal with my life.
I went to a salad place where they were like, “Pick a base, a protein, toppings, crunch, dressing.”
Halfway through I was like, “Actually, you know what? You pick. You live here.”
And the names they give sizes now are so aggressive.
Nothing can just be small, medium, large.
It’s always “tiny,” “regular,” and “beast.”
I don’t want to order food like I’m selecting a difficulty level in a video game.
“I’ll have the regular.”
“Oh, for most people that’s not enough.”
That’s okay. I’m not trying to defeat the meal. I just want lunch.
Also, self-checkout has become way too intimate.
It used to be simple: scan, pay, leave.
Now the machine talks to you like it’s disappointed in your character.
“Unexpected item in bagging area.”
Yeah, that’s how I feel about myself too, keep it moving.
Then it asks if I want to round up for charity while I’m buying crackers and soap at 9:40 p.m. Don’t ambush me morally when I’m clearly losing.
That’s the worst time to evaluate your generosity — under fluorescent lighting, holding shampoo, looking like you came in because your life skipped a maintenance appointment.
And if you hit “no,” the machine doesn’t say anything… but somehow it does.
You can feel it.
You walk out like, “I guess I’m the villain of CVS.”
Thank you, you’ve been great.
If you want, I can also write:
- a cleaner corporate-friendly version
- a more edgy club version
- or a version tailored to your voice/persona.
