"What?"

I yelled louder. "I said, Why aren’t you wearing the new hearing aid they gave you?"

"What are you talking about, dummy? I don’t need a damn maid, I got your mother!"

"Uh, Jay…uh, Chris, I mean…ah Sha… What the hell’s your name?…Paul…come with me to the living room, I want to show you this new hearing aid they gave me."

"That’s great, dad."

"What?"

"I said it’s great that you have the new hearing aid."

"It’s the best money can buy, you know. This is top-of-the-line. The best."

"Good for you… What kind is it, dad?"

"What?"

"I said, what kind is it?"

"It’s 4:30."

"Ha ha ha…"

"What was that?"

"I said, fantastic.. wonderful, dad."

"You can say that again."

"I know the drill… I know the drill."

My God, it’s January 21^st, Where does the time go? You know what this means…it’s almost time to throw out that Christmas eggnog in the refrigerator.

I was looking for something in my desk draw but I couldn’t find it because the draw was full of junk. Amongst the other crap, there have to be about twenty-five books of matches from various restaurants and bars in the Los Angeles area. At my place in Boston, I have two huge glass jars filled with matches from places that I’ve been to over the years. I don’t know how I got started collecting matchbooks but, even before I did comedy, I used to be out on the town every single night for years, so you can imagine the assortment I amassed. It has since become a habit to grab matches if I walk into a new watering hole.

Looking at the matches reminds of an funny true story that I later converted into a routine for my act. My law school was located on old Beacon Hill in Boston. Each time we would finish a grueling final exam at Suffolk University School of Law, my friends and I would leave the classroom and walk straight down to the Faneuil Hall Marketplace on the Boston waterfront where we would pound down cocktails at Lily’s bar until we were hammered and ready to buckle down for the next test. The practice became a tradition used to relieve the stress during finals because it gave us something to look forward to when we started to get burnt out. Plus, it was a convenient excuse to get shit-faced.

One such time, I was sitting on a stool alongside the outdoor bar at Lily’s and spotted a pack of matches from Buddies which, in the late 70’s - early 80’s, was the most well known and notorious gay bar in Boston. Even though I had a policy to include, in my collection, only matches that came from places that I had actually visited, I would occasionally make exception if the matchbook itself was unusual or if it represented a particularly unique establishment. I thought these matches would make an interesting addition to my collection so I slipped them into my pocket without a second thought and began drinking with my pals.

By the time we left, hours later, we were all laughing, stumbling and staggering across the marketplace, heading back to the Hill. As we approached the busy street that crosses to Boston City Hall and the plaza, I was joking around, wasn’t paying attention and wandered into traffic without looking. In an instant, my roommate Richard grabbed my arm and yanked me back onto the sidewalk just as a huge dump truck blew it’s horn and whizzed by me, missing me by inches.

Richard laughed, "Whew! Be careful! You almost got squashed by that truck!"

We all continued to laugh when, suddenly, my face became pale and I froze with a stunned look on my face. I began rummaging through my pockets and came up with the matches from Buddies.

My friends looked concerned. "What’s the matter, Paul?"

I told my friends that I found the matchbook on the bar at Lily’s and I was going to put them in the jar with my other matches. But what would have happened if I got killed by that truck? It’s bad enough that I would be dead, but the cops would have knocked on my parent’s door…

"Mr. And Mrs. Murphy. We’re sorry to inform you that your oldest son was hit by a truck and killed instantly this afternoon. Here are the contents of his pockets, we thought you might want them." …. and my parents would have been standing there sobbing until they sifted through the items and looked up at each other with their mouths hanging open in disbelief…

"Jack, I had no idea…There were no indications. He always went out with girls… always with girls… living a lie. The Playboys…the Farrah Fawcett poster…playing football… pretending to have no interest in Broadway shows…all just a lie…. a facade. I’m shocked…"