And this offends you as a Jewish person?

No, it offends me as a comedian!

-Seinfeld

I went to England to visit family when I was thirteen years old. Only now can I piece together how I’m related to all the people that I met on that trip. There were many cousins, a few great aunts and uncles, and my grandmother. I remember seeing my cousin Celia. She was an adult with a husband and daughter. She seemed quite excited to see me, there was an intensity to the look in her eye, or perhaps it was something behind her eyes. I was into comic books at the time and she heard this and brought me some. The comics that she brought were more like cartoons, though. I was more into Marvel Universe stuff but I said thank you. As I remember it, I was sitting in a chair and she was talking to me, staring intently into my eyes, so intense in fact that she didn’t notice that snot had run out of her nose and fell slowly down, dripping onto one of the comic books she had just given me. I knew even then not to say anything, that I should probably let it slide.

I wasn’t afraid of her but, because of that and other interactions over the next day or two, I knew that something was wrong. I would later find out that Celia was schizophrenic. Things worked out about as well as they could have for her. She lives in a home where she’s taken care of and she still has a relationship with her daughter who has started a family of her own. But Celia has had a rough go of it.

So, having seen the reality, it’s annoying to me when schizophrenia is used in comedy to mean either wicked fuckin’ crazy or, erroneously, multiple personalities. I’m not trying to get all That’s Not Funny; My Brother Died That Way on you. I’m really not. It’s just that it seems like a lazy comedic trope. It’s one of many.

I thought of this piece while reading a Nora Ephron essay from I Remember Nothing in which she made reference to forgetting to buy a book about Alzheimer’s and how she thought that was funny at the time. There’s also a joke in Oh, Hello where George St. Geegland (John Mulaney) pulls a note out of his pocket and reads, “‘Remember you have Alzheimer’s’ what does that even mean?!” I’m a fan of both Nora Ephron’s book and Oh, Hello but my father watched his grandmother and mother succumb to Alzheimer’s. It was slow and devastating for him. It’s a bit more than just forgetting stuff.

In the eighties I saw an episode of L.A. Law where someone with Tourette’s Syndrome was suing his old company. He got fired for cursing non-stop in the workplace. This trope has been rolled out a few times as well, most recently in Horace and Pete, which I hated (and no one will argue with me about that now). I knew two people in college with Tourette’s. One was in my fraternity, the other was just an acquaintance. I had to be told that both had Tourette’s. The former had a tic where he would move his head like he was shivering a little bit, the latter would make a noise in the back of his throat. That was it. Tim Howard, goalkeeper for the USMNT has Tourette’s. I can’t figure out what his tic is and he does commentary for ninety minute soccer games. And yet every time I see Tourette’s the person in a show they are screaming the n-word and dropping f-bombs and then apologizing for their condition.

And can we just get rid of herpes in comedy? This will be a bad habit to break because it’s kind of comedically perfect. Everyone is afraid of it and it’s not an epidemic killing a community of people. So, the stakes are just about right for the perfect tension release in a joke. And the word herpes kind of sounds funny. But it also continues the stigma of STIs for a lot of people. It’s a private shame and it sucks.

I’ve used personal examples here but I’m not playing the, “You have no idea the pain that blah blah blah,” card. Go ahead and joke about stuff. I’ll joke about heart disease and cirrhosis, the things that took my parents. I’ll even joke about Alzheimer’s, herpes or schizophrenia. But, as weird as it sounds, the joke should respect the reality of the disease. Don’t just pull from the suite of knee jerk associations that have been around for so long that they’re almost a shorthand. Alzheimer’s – I forgot. Schizo – batshit crazy multiple personalities. Tourette’s – fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Herpes – ew, worst Tinder date ever.

In improv we’re told so often to play the reality of the scene. Don’t play the sitcom situation that you’ve seen on TV a thousand times. What’s your real experience? It takes a long time as an improviser to, for example, be labeled gay and not do some lispy character who loves Liza Minelli. (Hell, I probably still do that but if a gay person wants to call me an asshole for doing it, I deserve it. Big time.) In storytelling it’s all about specifics. You can’t bust out with, “I was going to my grandma’s house for Thanksgiving but she has Alzheimer’s so she forgot we were coming.” It’s not real. We know it’s not real. That’s a joke, a joke that belongs at stand up open mike from a comedian who is on stage for literally the first time and who then drops that joke because it gets crickets.

I try to take care of my health and get regular checkups from the doctor, including STI screenings. The last couple of times I’ve talked to a doctor about herpes, do you know what I was told? That’s so common we don’t test for it, you might have it but if you’re not presenting with anything, don’t bother. This is true, ask a doctor.

The thing that so many people are terrified of makes doctors kind of shrug their shoulders. Now that’s funny.