Physical Comedy Lesson One: How to Drop Groceries

Physical Comedy 

Lesson One: How to Drop Groceries

1. Buy one 4-pound bag dog food, one 14-ounce carton Haagen-Dazs chocolate chocolate chip ice cream (get the ice cream insurance plan if offered), and one small bag chips.

2. Leave checkstand.  Hold dog food bag in crook of left arm, ice cream in right hand, and balance chips on top of the dog food and the ice cream. Don’t balance them too well. Well-balanced groceries always look like they’re dropped on purpose.

3. Exit store.

4. Wait until a man walking toward the store is about 10 feet in front of you. (This part is crucial.)

5. Lower ice cream just enough for the chips to slide off.

6. Try to catch chips by taking a few of your fingers off the ice cream, lunging forward, and attempting to snatch chip bag between fingers and ice cream carton.

7. Fail. (See #8 for details.)

8. Throw ice cream at the approaching person. Make sure carton rolls off your fingers so that it continues its roll right up to the man’s feet.

9. Try to come up with zippy one-liner. It’s funnier if you fail and say something dumb, like “right to ya.”

10. Accept ice cream from laughing man who has picked it up for you. Here’s where having another person in your incident  scene is crucial. You’ll only know you’ve perfected your slapstick if he looks like he’s trying not to laugh but can’t keep it in.

I hope you’ve learned a lot from my first installment of physical comedy lessons learned from real life. If you’d like to know what I create when I’m actually TRYING to be funny, please find my fairy tale comedy Littlefoot Part One on Kindle.