Ten years ago a friend of mine had a birthday party for her husband. Unbeknownst to any of us, it turned out to be a “TED speakers” event in her backyard. TED was a relatively new entity, experts talking concisely and passionately about an idea they cared about. Her husband loved these talks and this was her gift to him, having a handful of these esteemed people show up and dazzle us. Which, frankly, they did.
I sincerely wish I could remember what each of them talked about, but I don’t. No diss on them, I think it’s because I was so fascinated by the whole concept. I started following TED speakers. I loved live storytelling and had spent years teaching stand-up at UCLA in the evenings and really enjoyed it. I loved helping others by using my actor/comedian war stories as illustrations of what not to do. TED talks seemed like the perfect marriage of storytelling and teaching for me.
The TED mission is “Ideas Change Everything.” In their application process, the essential question is, what’s your one big idea worth spreading?
If only I had one.
Now, if you’ve read or heard anything about the last eight years of my life, you probably know where I’m going with this. When my mother became depressed facing Alzheimer’s I had the idea to hire a comedian – someone not her daughter – to make her laugh. To bring some light back into her eyes. I did this and it worked. The comic came and made my mother laugh – not by telling jokes – but by having the courage to take her in and tell the truth. Not the tragic, big picture truth, the truth in the moment, that my mother had likely had enough of strangers trying to talk to her.
“You don’t want to talk to me,” the comic said, “You’re probably thinking who is this schmuck just talking to me?” My mother’s eyes lit up. Then she repeated the word, “Schmuck!” Laughing. I hired the woman right there to come visit my mother eight hours a week.
I finally had my big idea. That was eight years ago. After applying to TEDx opportunities during these years, I finally landed one in Cape May, NJ. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done – and I did a solo show with puppets in 2000!
TED.com notified me that this Sunday June 7th, my talk “What My Mother’s Alzheimer’s Teaches Us About Laughter” will be going out to it’s YouTube subscribers at 9:30 am EST. As soon as I have the link I will share with all of you too!
Then we can all share with four million of our closest friends.
