I'm Terrified of My Wife and Daughters _ Mark Poolos Stand-Up Comedy

My 8-year-old takes my hand and she's like, it's alright, Daddy. Everybody dies. And I was like, how dare you be more emotionally mature than me. I play with my Pokemon cards. Oh, man. Yeah, I've been married 12 years, together 16. It's been awesome, man. Such a weird meeting story, too. You know, we lived like 10 minutes from each other, ran in the same friend circles, and we met at the Funny Bone Comedy Club in Columbus, Ohio, right? How weird, and, you know, God bless her, man. I was a work in progress when she met me. Wrote a comic for seven years. A lot of bad habits. My wardrobe was pretty rough. I think I had a bunch of big dog shirts and Zubas, and one dress shirt I wore on stage into funerals. That's all I had. She whipped me up into shape. I got two kids. Both girls, 11 and 8. Our 11-year-old, she got diagnosed with autism, and it's been interesting kind of finding our new normal, and she's such a funny, silly kid. And she does something at night, as we like to call it, Willow's Closing Time. So we'll put her to bed, right, and then me and my wife will watch some stories or something, we'll be laughing and stuff, and she'll just get out of bed and demand that everyone goes to sleep. She'll come into the bedroom. One time she grabbed a full glass of water and just dumped it out on the floor, while making eye contact with me. I was like, that's a power move. But the best of all time was she came in one time, shut the TV off, and took the controller with her, and I went, that's checkmate. That's checkmate right there. And our 8-year-old, Frankie, she's a pretty typical, normal, silly kid. She loves the Barbie and the pink and the sparkles and stuff. Recently, she has become obsessed with death, which has been great. I know kids kind of go through that phase, but man, it hits you like a ton of bricks. She was playing with Barbies one day, and then she just sits on the bed next to you and goes, so you're just, you're gonna die, huh? Mom's gonna die, that dog's gonna die. And I can't deal with it, I'm like, listen, I am almost 50, I can see the light. I'm at that age where if I lose something, I'm not 100% sure it's coming back, you know? I lost a toenail last week, and I'm like, that's probably just gonna be the weird toe without a nail. And once again, God bless my wife, she's an exec at a hospice company, end-of-life care is kind of what she does, so she's extremely comfortable talking about it. I think almost a little too comfortable talking about it. I walked past the bedroom the other day, they were picking out their tombstone, so I'm like, all right, listen. It is too much, I can't handle it. My eight-year-old takes my hand, and she's like, it's all right, Daddy, everybody dies. And I was like, how dare you be more emotionally mature than me? I'm gonna play with my Pokemon cards. But she does crack me up so much, man. So they were building a liquor store at the end of our block across from the gas station, and they had put up a big sign that said, liquor store's coming. And the bus that my daughter rides would go past the sign, and I guess they had been talking about it on the bus. And she came from school one day, and she was like, man, I just can't wait till that liquor store opens. And I was like, wait, what? And she goes, yeah, it's gonna be so fun when that liquor store opens. I go, hang on a sec, what do you think a liquor store is? And she goes, come on, Dad, it's the store where you get to lick stuff, you know? Candy and ice cream. I was like, you're gonna be super disappointed when you find out what a liquor store is. Till you turn 35, get married, and have two kids, and then it's gonna be your favorite place in the world. Oh, man. My wife, you know, she's great, man. She was in finance, right? She was in finance, and she didn't feel like she was helping people, so she went back to school to become a nurse. And then she went back and got her master's, and then she went back and got her doctorate. So I'm literally married to a doctor, but I told her, I'm not calling you doctor, ever. Maybe Dr. Honey, that's about all you're gonna get. I did text her one time, when I ran out of toilet paper, I was like, paging Dr. Beat, emergency. But she's got a lot of pressure, she's got a lot of responsibilities on her shoulder, you know, she supports the whole family and all that stuff, and I'm at the kitchen table, writing fart jokes about her, so, it's a lot of responsibility. It's a lot of responsibility. She woke up one night, right? In a cold sweat, and she's like, oh, I had the worst dream ever. And I was like, oh, honey, that's horrible, what was it about? And she goes, I lost my job, they took the house, they took the kids, and you left me for some lady that made really good cupcakes. I was like, ooh, that's rough. I go, I had a similar nightmare, where I had one Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, and you know, you think it's all fun and games, you know, it's chocolate, it's candy, but there's payroll, you know? There's supply issues, you know? And the Oompa Loompas wanted to unionize at one point, but thankfully my wife, Beyonce, was able to calm everything down, so. Now, I didn't see the knife, but I did feel it, she was like, ah! Gravy sprayed out, that's all that's in there. Just a bunch of gravy. We got an old man cat, too. Got a cat who's 17 years old. He's got a couple of tooths left in his mouth. He's a very sloppy toilet guy, right? He's just kicking his litter everywhere. And I saw this thing on the internet, right, on TikTok, where it was like this robot cat box. You see this thing, right? They go in there, they do their thing, and then it cleans it itself, right? And then you only have to take the bag out like once a week, or once every two weeks, and I was like, what a great idea. So I buy it, and I put it down there, just assuming he's gonna go right in it and start using it. Go down there after a week and open the bucket, nothing in there. And I had to put a Ring camera down there to watch the room to see if he was using it. I wake up, the first three videos are him just walking in there and staring at it for like a full 30 seconds, and then just pooping in the potted plant. And I was like, hey! But I did start laughing really hard, because I'm like, I can't even imagine like what he's thinking. He's staring at this thing. He's just like, I am not pooping in a spaceship! Bring back my box of dirt! That's what we had to do. We had to bring back his regular litter box, and I had to sell the robot one on Facebook Marketplace. If it wasn't crazy enough at our house, for a while there we were hosting foreign exchange students, and that was kind of an interesting thing for us, because on the surface, it makes a lot of sense. You get this kid from another country, you learn about their culture, learn about yours, you got extra hands around the house, you get these lifelong friends, but you don't talk about the little things. She goes and, so our first group of kids was a girl from Ukraine and a girl from Italy. She goes and picks them up at the airport, drops them at the house, and then just goes back to work. And now I'm in the kitchen with two foreigners that have never been to America before, and barely speak English, and I'm just trying not to start an international incident before breakfast. But I'm like, you know what? I'll cook them some breakfast. Food, the international language, but then I got a panic attack. I'm like, this is their first meal in America. I can't mess this up, you know? So I make them biscuits and gravy, pretty normal American meal. But I was like, I gotta kick it up a notch, because this is America. So I switched out the regular biscuits for the Cheddar Bay biscuits from Red Lobster, right? And if you've never tried it, try it. It's dynamite, right? And they ate everything, and immediately they were downstairs calling their parents, and I don't speak Ukrainian or Italian, but I'm pretty sure they were like, I'm not coming home. Rent out my room, do whatever you want, but this is where I live now. This fat guy just deep fried a Twinkie, so. So.