Group On. Group Off. The Grouper.

I like to organize. I group together all my socks, categorized by style, color, and foot solution. I organize my sharpies in a special sharpie box, separate from the boring pens. I group together all my tools in a basket known cleverly as the “tool basket.” It’s actually quite messy, but I know what’s in there. The basket provides more of a casual grouping for the occasional screw that needs screwing or tooth that needs pulling.

As humans, we naturally form groups, sub-groups, and teeny-tiny mini-groups, and yet, the instinct to maneuver groups took me some time to develop. I certainly didn’t always get it right, like the time I joined that anti-Kool-Aid cult, which meant - and this seems obvious now - it meant the group had no clear exit strategy.

I grew up in a family of manageable size, with two parents and a brother, like an intimate comedy club where I could work on my early material. Comedy felt like the most direct way to get a positive reaction from this very specific audience. Laughter brought immediate feedback. Either they laughed, or they increased the TV volume to play me off stage.

We also spent a considerable amount of time in a much larger venue performing for extended family, which gave me lots of practice adapting my best bits from home for a larger discerning audience.

Grandma built a good reputation for up-and-comers in the family looking to get a laugh. Everyone got time in front of the big mirror as long as you helped wash the dishes. The cover charge for her living room comedy club consisted of a side dish, with no drink minimum. In fact, they kept a stocked bar in the living room, so no drink maximum either. It was the best of times... it was Early Times.

Here we see my grandma and grandpa clearly enjoying my latest comedy routine.

When I got into school, I expected some of my family material to really hit, but I found an audience with much different tastes. Their idea of a joke consisted of casual humiliation and unsubstantiated ridicule. They gravitated to cliques based on random and arbitrary guidelines. Some bonded over similar interests, but others simply found like-minded sociopaths to hone their skills together as potential serial murderers or CEOs.

I felt like an outcast, an outsider at my grade school, especially after lecturing everyone on the ridiculous notion of forming cliques. Naturally, as was in vogue at the time, I faced mocking, ridicule, and even a full-time bully of my own. I didn’t sign up for the bully. He was assigned to me. By himself.

My luck changed in high school, where I found immediate acceptance in an instant tight-knit group known as the jazz band. They welcomed me as a weirdo. We were all weirdos. I embraced my weirdo clique immediately.

All the bands in high school included older kids, so they could put you in line if you took things “too far.” That didn’t happen often, because they also liked to take things “too far.”

We had the kind of fun you only hear about in raunchy teen comedies, except without the booze or gratuitous nudity. Just the ridiculous intense bonding and endless raucous, infantile jokes. Exactly what you might expect from an all-boys high school in the 80s.

We developed strong bonds of friendship. We chased each other. We wrestled a lot. My band director would sit on me and threaten to suffocate me with a chalk eraser (remember those?), all in good fun, of course. Not at all inappropriate behavior. Pretty sure.

Music would become the conduit for my group making for many decades to come. Luckily, I found no shortage of weirdo musicians in bands I could join for decades to come, from marching bands to choirs, and of course my longest running association with my current group of jazzy weirdos, the Outcast Jazz Band (we are for hire).

For a long time, I felt pressure to bring my A-game to friend groups, delivering House-of-Grandma-level entertainment to earn and hold onto my acceptance in the group. Only recently have I started to realize that my good friends don’t really require such a performance.

Regardless, making people laugh remains my preferred form of self-expression, whether we cross paths as fellow musicians. Or coworkers. Or family. Really, any group of weirdos will do.