I Still Have It. . . I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It by Rita Rudner Page A

add a safety pin.
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The Second Act
    M Y FIRST WRITING PARTNER WAS A WOMAN NAMED Marjorie Gross. In the early eighties, we were both just beginning to practice stand-up comedy. We were getting onstage very late at night or, in a positive light, very early in the morning, so we had lots of time to hang out and talk in the bar. I began watching Marjorie’s stage set and she began watching mine.
    Writing jokes isn’t easy for anyone, so Marjorie and I decided to meet a few times a week and try to do it together.
    The thing that’s unusual about this is that Marjorie and I were about as different as left and right. We had no business writing together and it made even less sense that we were good friends. I was at that point in my life very structured and somewhat rigid; she was a total free spirit whose life swayed wildly depending on her mood. I was neat, she was sloppy; I was always on time, she was always late. We were Felix and Oscar, only we were both women. One of her favorite pastimes was tossing wet tea bags across the room to see if she could hit the garbage can. I think she missed on purpose. She liked the sound of the splat.
    We had one thing in common: both of our mothers had died when we were in our early teens, mine from breast cancer and Marjorie’s from ovarian. We vowed to be extra diligent to ensure that didn’t happen to us.
    There was no one funnier than Marjorie Gross. I would study the structure of writing jokes by listening to comedy albums, and she would just come out with thoughts that were totally unique. A typical joke-writing session would produce the following.

Rita: Doctors can tell a lot about a baby while it’s still inside the womb these days. My friend is pregnant and it seems the baby is normal, and it’s a boy, and it’s a lawyer.
Marjorie: How do Chinese parents know when their babies are starting to talk?

    Marjorie refused to do anything the way it should be done. Her apartment had been broken into repeatedly. Marjorie would call her answering machine once an hour not to check her messages but to make sure it was still there. Eventually she decided to take the law into her own hands. Instead of locking the window and having bars placed on the outside the way New Yorkers do, creating a kind of well-decorated prison, Marge bought a can of axle grease and smeared it over the window ledge. The burglar would simply repeatedly slip and fall when he tried to enter her third-floor premises.
    I saw half of many Broadway shows with my friend Marjorie. It was she who taught me the art of second-acting.
    “It’s easy,” she explained. “You just stand outside the theater at intermission and mingle with the audience, and when they let everyone back in for the second act you walk in with the real people.”
    “How do you know which seats are empty?” I asked stupidly.
    “Rita, think. You go to the bathroom and wait till everyone is seated and then you find the empty chairs. Nobody cares. It’s not like we’re taking seats from other people. We’re not even seeing the whole play. If we really like the second act, we can buy tickets and see the first. This will actually increase their business.”
    Our scam worked well until Marge got a little cocky. We were second-acting American Buffalo when Marge decided to put her feet up on the chair in front of her and kicked a lady in the head. We were asked by an usher to show our tickets and were summarily shown the exit. That is the closest I’ve ever come to breaking the law.
    Marge and I began writing sketches together. After we actually sold a few to a television show in Canada, we decided to audition to write for Saturday Night Live. Marjorie was very concerned that my clothing would not be hip enough and came to my house before our meeting to see if she could help me put together a few things that didn’t match.
    Our favorite audition sketch we’d written for SNL featured Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty, all divorced and