Watch or listen to the stand-up comedy special 'Hear This!' (2012) by Dan Cummins on Comedy Buff. Transcript available. Tracks include: Kicking Kids, Dead, Smoothie Assault, Cash Only, Here Come the Spoons, and Pipe Guy.

Dan Cummins

Hear This!

That makes me think I, uh, I'm a parent. I should probably talk about that. I know that's kind of a weird segue. I do understand context. I don't want you to worry. It's not like I'm at home going, okay, kids, ready for a bedtime story? Ten years ago, Folsom Street, stop crying. I have kids. I, uh, I thought, I'm a single dad. I thought having kids would make me kind of calm down too, but I'm crazier now that I have kids.
Because I'm the kind of person, like, before I had kids, I didn't like kids. Now that I have kids, I fucking hate kids. Love mine. Love mine to death. Like, more than I could love any other person. Like, love them. But now other kids are, in addition to being annoying like they were before, they're threats to the only kids that matter in the world to me. You know, and it makes me have crazy thoughts.
Like, like, pre-kid, I never seriously considered kicking a toddler. I never weighed that out. Now I've had that thought. I thought about it. That one happened at daycare. Because I, my oldest, Kyler, when he was two, my son, it was the first time I had to take one of my kids and put him in daycare so it's an experience where they're not going to be with family. You know, it's the first time I'm having, leaving them with people who aren't related to them.
And that's, that's tough as a parent. Because, like, you care so much, and, you know, it's just another kid to them. And he looks so small, and he's helpless, he's two years old, and he's, and he's just looking at me like, you know, like, he's scared. And then finally he gets a toy, and, and he holds it, and he looks at me like, I can do it, Daddy. I'm going to be okay. And I was like, okay, he's going to be okay.
This is going to work. And I'm about ready to leave. And I see some other fucking kid come around the corner. Just like a dirty little shit kid. Finger in his nose, eyes too close together. Sure, he's two, but everyone knows he's not going to mount a dick. He's that kid. Sounds mean, but you know it's true. This little kid comes over, grabs Kyler's toy, rips it away from him, and just walks off like it's his toy.
And Kyler just looks at me like, why don't you do that, Daddy? And that moment just, boom! But again, I don't feel like the police don't understand. Why did you, why did you kick that kid? Well, there was like a, there was a toy, and it wasn't his toy. Like, kind of was his toy, because part of the day. Wait, aren't you the smoothie guy? He whispered to me! Why aren't you listening? Little side note, how great of an invention would it be?
I think this would be the best-selling invention ever. Why can't scientists design a suit that you can put on a kid and make it safe to kick them? Like, if you could put a suit on a kid and know that they were just indestructible, I don't, I don't think I'd ever stop kicking kids. That would, it would definitely be my favorite thing. I can't even imagine how good that would feel to kick a kid as hard as I can.
Like, and the smaller, the better. Get some lift. Like, just get them up in the air. It would be like new entertainment, like halftime, you know, Super Bowl, you win a million dollars if you make a 35-yard field goal with a preemie. You know, get some, get some angle on that little cannon fodder. I love how you dropped off at preemie. Like, I love how a lot of you guys were kind of with it on, like, little kid, baby, and they're like, just that, I'd be like, whoa, hey, hey, come on, come on, Dan, I'll kick the shit out of a baby.
But I'm not touching a preemie. I'm a decent person. So far, so good. This is such a weird job. I never know how it's gonna go. People always ask me before the show. Like, the most common question-- I kind of hide before the show, usually, 'cause if people see me, the most common question I get is, "So you gonna be funny tonight?" Maybe. If it was up to me, yes. That's the horrible part about this job.
It's not up to me. I have to rely on a lot of other people to get it done every single time. That's a bad strategy in life. Like, just in life in general, whenever you start involving other people in a project, the more people you involve, the greater the odds that one of them is just gonna fuck it up for everybody else. That's what people do. They ruin things. Other people are the worst part of life.
Some days, for me, the hardest part about being alive is just knowing that so many other people aren't dead. Just seeing them breathe is frustrating. It sounds awful, but we all have those moments. We all have those days where if you had a magic superpower just to eliminate anybody you wanted, you would use it. Like, maybe an hour into that, you'd just be willy-dilly, just dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.
Just constant death. Over nothing. That's what amazes me, like when you have hateful thoughts. It's not over, like, when I get mad and just start wishing death upon somebody, it's never because they killed somebody or attacked my family. It's for the pettiest things ever. I will wish hate upon them. I'm just like, stop staring at me, creeper, dead. Stop standing behind me so close in line, I can feel your breath dead.
How do you not feel the dried up white spittle in the corner of your mouth? I have been staring at like a maniac for seven minutes. It's your own face. Clean it, dead. I was thinking about why am I so capable of wishing so much hatred upon somebody in a moment like that? And it's because when you're really angry, other people aren't real. They're not humans. They're just obstacles to your joy. You don't think of them as a real person.
Like, the best way to illustrate this is an experience everyone's had. You know, when you're driving to work, you're gonna be late unless you speed and you're in the left-hand lane, but there's somebody in front of you who will not let you pass and they're going 10 miles an hour below the speed limit. At that moment, that's not a human driving that car. That's not a real person. That's not a father or a husband or a pillar of their community who overcame childhood obesity to be a motivational speaker.
That's some motherfucker whose car needs to explode. Please, God, burn him to death now. Enflame him. Or better, let him live. Let his charred face be a reminder to other slow drivers. I know, it sounds a little hateful when you say it out loud. You know what's that? That moment of rage, if that car did explode. Like, I'd love that my first impulse would be like, "Oh my God, I hope he's okay." But I think it'd be like, "No, yeah, good, you son of a bitch."
That'll teach you to drive occasionally slow sometimes. Now that you're burned to death, I bet you won't do that. I thought I would get calmer as I get older, but it's just opposite. I just get angry every year. Like when I was 20, just the stereotype of the old man on the front porch of his cabin with a shotgun across his lap. Just, you know, just get off my property. I thought that was the most ridiculous thing ever.
I'm like, what are you talking? That's absurd. Now, I'm like, I get it. Stay off his property. You worked hard for that shit. Leave him alone. I can't wait to be that guy. Sometimes I feel like the only thing to keep me from being that guy is a shotgun and some property. As soon as I get a place to defend, you can stay out. It's not like I'm angry all the time. I think like most, it's not like, I'd say like 23 and a half plus hours a day.
I'm nice. Like I'm good. It's just that extra 15 to 30 minutes. That's when the hate and the death spiral around in my brain. There's probably not a day that doesn't go by where in a moment, I don't at least wish death upon one person. Usually customer service interactions. It's so painful. It's just I can't handle it. I have no patience. And I feel like I have low expectations. I'm like, just do your job.
Just do your job. That's all I want. Like a couple weeks ago, I wanted to kill a smoothie guy at the smoothie stand. Because for me, this is a no-brainer. Like, I have the amount of money needed to purchase a smoothie. I know what smoothie I would like, and I have the ability to communicate this to this person. He has the ability to take my money and make my smoothie and give him my change. Let's just do it, buddy.
He's not doing it. He's not doing it because he's preoccupied with a personal phone call at work on his cell phone, just talking to his friend. I hate that, just ignoring me. And I hate it because it's never an emergency. It's never a call he had to take. You never overhear something like, what? Are you serious? My mom is dead? In that situation, you got to wait. I know that. Three, four minutes? I don't know what protocol is.
I do know eventually, you are going to remember that you're still thirsty. And guess who's not thirsty, you guys? His mom, because she's fucking dead. Okay? Strawberry goodness is the last thing she's worried about. I'm not quite that bad, but I'm close. This guy, he finally noticed me after a minute trying to stare a hole into the side of his face. And I expect him to do the decent thing people do in that situation.
And they hang up. They're like, I mean, I got to call you back. And they apologize. And he's like, what can I get you? No. He kicks it up to a new level of douche-dom I had not even considered as a possibility for him to do. He just continues talking full volume like I'm bothering him at his house. Walks over to the counter. And then when he gets to me, tilts his phone so he doesn't bother his precious friend and whispers so his friend can't hear.
Just, can I get you anything? Dead. That's the moment. Just craziness. It's cycling around in my mind like a maniac. But like most of us, I thought a bunch of horrible things but then did nothing. Actually, it was embarrassing what I did. When he whispered, somehow he like Jedi mind-tricked me into whispering my order back to him. Truly hating myself as I'm whispering. Just, can I just have a strawberry smile?
Can I smell like a small strawberry smile? I was like, why didn't I do anything? Because it's not like he was a big guy. He was a little tiny guy. I could have destroyed him. I just don't feel like the police would understand. Prison. Prison keeps me from doing a lot of crazy shit, you guys. Just knowing that it's out there waiting for me to snap. Like if I would have just smashed his face and the police show up and he's laying in a pool of his own blood, I don't think they're gonna be cool with my explanation of, he whispered to me!
I want a strawberry smoothie! I don't think they're gonna be like, sir, it's okay, sir. Sir, get his body out of here. John, get the body out of here so he doesn't have to see him anymore. I am so sorry that he whispered to you. We are gonna give you a punch card. Fully punched. We're gonna give you a fully punched punch card. John, get him out of here, goddammit! No one will whisper to you ever again.
No, I don't think that's gonna happen. Yeah, prison keeps me from doing stuff like this. Prison and the knowledge that fantasizing about violence is way more fun than real violence because I've experienced both and it tends to work out a little better in my mind. Because in my mind, my enemies all have one thing in common, very important thing. They know nothing about self-defense. And here, glorious one-sided violence, just like a cartoon action movie.
Like, I do exactly what I want to do in my mind. I want him to grab, on his phone, I want him to grab the back of it and just smash his face and bounce it. Magic, like, I don't even know if he could do that. But, like, I want to bounce his face up. Maybe he gets a little lift. Lifts his feet a little bit. Drops down. I do a fist bump. Fuck yeah! High five a stranger. Victory lap. I take over the smoothie stand, make free smoothies for, like, two hours.
Celebrate. Just gloriousness is going on up here. But I didn't act on it because I know in real life that plan would fall apart maybe two 