How The Trailer Park Prepared Me For Comedy
Stand-Up, Rambo, & Home Alone (Comedy Mindhacks #34)
Growing up in a trailer park, I played outside all the time. I played in the woods. I played on the basketball court. But I also set boobytraps. Real ones. Trip wires. Spikes in holes. Sandbags up in trees. One time, I watched a man named Paul, crawl under his trailer with a rifle to kill a cat. Well, the cat got out, ran down the hill behind a few other trailers, and Paul, rifle still firmly in hand, hit one of my trip wires. Wham!!! It was nuts and almost led to him and my stepdad getting in a fist fight in our driveway.
Why did I set that tripwire up? Who knows. Boredom, maybe. Curiosity, perhaps. Back then, I was fascinated with how you could set something up quietly, something that looked like nothing, and then just watch it work. Thankfully, no one got hurt either, because they really could have. What got me thinking about this was Mehdi Hasan’s book, Win Every Argument, where he brings up a movie from my childhood, namely, Rambo: First Blood.
In this film, Rambo’s actually not killing people, at least not like in the sequels. He’s setting up brutal boobytraps in the woods: sticks, spikes, pits. This, along with movies like those in the Home Alone franchise, was very influential in my early and teen years. Whether it’s John Rambo or Kevin McAllister, when it comes to traps, their enemies never see ‘em coming. They just walk right in until…snap!!!
And what does this all have to do with stand-up comedy? Well, essentially that’s how jokes work, too. Being a comedian is really just like setting a booby trap. You walk the audience into one story, let them get comfortable, and then you flip it on them and make them realize you were telling a different story all along. You pull them into something they weren’t expecting. They think they know where it’s going, then the punchline hits.
People sometimes think comedians just talk and hope it’s funny. That happens at a lot of open mics. But that’s not me; that’s not how I operate. And that’s not at all how it goes for comedians I respect. Every beat of a bit is intentional. Every laugh is engineered. That’s often even the case with crowd work. Yes, there’s spontaneity, but there’s also planning. Jokes are like those traps I used to set and every aspect matters. Every stick, every knot, every angle determines whether it’ll work or not. With a trap, you’re not hoping someone trips, you’re counting on it. And with a joke, you’re not hoping the story you lead them into fools them, you’re depending on it.
The first time I did stand-up, I got a laugh and literally, right then, I knew it: the trap worked. It was an amazing moment. And the joy I got from that, the mix of surprise and connection, hasn’t faded. Comedy lets me continue to study and play with language the way I used to play with rope and wire: bending it, shaping it, hiding it just enough to make someone stumble in the right direction. But instead of a sandbag to the head, the payoff now is laughter. Unlike Rambo, or those traps in the trailer park, the people I “catch” now often thank me afterward.
I think, in some ways, the trailer park trained me to be a comedian, whether I knew it or not, whether I wanted it to or not. I will say, that trailer park was absolutely hilarious. I basically grew up inside the show Trailer Park Boys. That show is not exaggerating. Not at all. Every person I knew back then could’ve had their own spin-off. And when you grow up around that much chaos (and fun!), you start to see patterns. You learn when to speak, when to shut up, and when to throw in a one-liner just to survive. It was like comedy bootcamp.
Anyway, I think it’s a pretty cool analogy. It’s fun to think about how comedy, like trap-building, is about using your tools precisely. And language, well, that’s the sharpest weapon I’ve got. When used well, it’s insanely powerful. One well-placed word can flip a room. One clean setup can buy you total silence just before the laugh breaks. And I seriously love when there’s quiet just before the trap springs and the roar of laughter follows. There’s not much better in life than experiencing that.
By the way, if you have any interest at all in learning to write some jokes or doing stand-up comedy, you should check out my online joke writing course, “The Joke Writer’s Lab,” HERE. Have fun springing traps on those around you!