My comedy performance

I have been doing open mike comedy readings. This is one of my performances.

English is my second language, and sometimes people commend me on my grasp of the English language. There is nothing mysterious about it. If you have had to learn something consciously rather than unconsciously, you will understand it better than if your learning has been unconscious. Similarly someone who went from being a bad person to being a good person will understand what it means to be a good person better than someone who has always been a good person. Along the way though people can make quite amusing mistakes.

My mother went to a store and said that she needed a screw. The employee took her to the manager, and she said again that she needed a screw. Then she made a gesture of the screw, and they understood what she meant.

In Russia there is a kind of lamp called a bra. My mother went to a hardward store and said that she was looking for a bra. They told her, “You are in the wrong store.”

My father in the Soviet Union was an engineer designing drilling equipment. He comes to America and composes his resume with the help of a Russian to English dictionary. He looks the English for the Russian word for “drill” and finds the word “bore,” so he puts on his resume, Boring engineer.

I had a friend who came to America when he was 13. When asked why he left he said that it was because in Russia the Jewish people don't feel themselves at home.

The Russian word for condom is preservativ. This leads to interesting situations, such as when a long-time immigrant told a more recent arrival that yogurt was made with preservativs.

The first thing that children want to know when faced with a kid from another country is swear words in their home language. One day my father was pulling into the neighborhood to hear American kids shouting Russian swearwords at each other.

Kids do interesting things with language even when they don't know the meaning of the words. My stepson once threw a toy at me and shouted Sprachen Ze Deutsch.

We went with him to an animal hospital, and he says, “This is an animal hospital. They treat you like a dog.”

A friend of mine walked into a hospital and asked to see the doctor. They ask, “Which doctor?” He says, “No, I need a proper doctor.”

I had a girlfriend whom I called a squirrel. She liked nuts in all three senses of the word.

And to conclude with the usual,

Why did the crazy man cross the road? Because he thought that he was a chicken. Why did the scared guy cross the road? Because he was chicken. Why did the duck cross the road? Because he was running away from a quack.