Sarah Silverman's Dad Taught Her The Most Tasteless Jokes | Netflix Is A Joke

Okay, I had to go to sleepaway camp... every year since I was 6 years old. And it was terrible for me because I chronically wet the bed until I was 15 years old. So it was a nightmare. I learned a lot of skills, like total dissociation. Making a cot out of soaked sheets while stinking of urine and pretending that's not the case. What kind of parents would send a chronic bedwetter to sleepaway camp? They must be monsters. No. They are not monsters. Here's the thing. Well. Like, my dad... his dad beat him up every day. And then during the school year, they sent him to the goyim.

To the boarding school. I'm sorry. To the boarding school. And then at boarding school... they kicked him every day, they called him a dirty Jew, because that's when... America was great. And... -And then in the-- Okay. - That was pretty good. And then in the summer, he went to camp and blossomed and was a star and was everything he wanted to be. And then the parents just think... You know, he just thought, "No, camp is great. It will define her. It will be her joy. Because that's what it was for me." Know? So I had to go to camp.

And as a compromise, he would give me

joke

books. Because I loved

joke

s. And then, also, maybe I'd make friends that way. So, I remember the summer I was 8 because I had just learned to read when I was 7. Someone in the audience when I was in Vermont said, "I was 4." Damn good for you. I was 7 years old. I learned to read when I was 7 years old. So when I was 8 years old, I was excited. I had books. I was going to read. And my dad has no limits. I don't know if he looked through them or not.

Um, but they were books one and two of Truly Tasteless Jokes. And I remember the first joke on the first page. It was a long paragraph, but I can tell it in two seconds. It was "Little Red Riding Hood, blah, blah, blah. And then the big bad wolf says, 'I'm going to eat you.'" And then Little Red Riding Hood says, 'Eat, eat, eat.' Doesn't anyone fuck anymore?'" And I was like, "What does this mean?" Then when I was 30, I thought, "Oh, Jesus Christ. That's so inappropriate." He was... My dad's not... He has no boundaries.

He's not appropriate... He's really not... He... He treated us like brothers. Like, I remember one time, when He was very young, he and my mom went on a double date. And when he got home, he plopped down in the hall... There was like a bench in the hall and I was sitting there and I asked him how it went. He said, "Oh, it was the worst. We were supposed to go out with the Sterlings, and then only Mr. Sterling showed up. Because he said that Ms. Sterling had his period. And when it comes to Punto, he comes out like liver and I'm like, 'I don't need to know that.'" I was like, "Dad, I get it.

I'm 5 years old and I don't even know. I need to know that." But my dad, um... camp was where he thrived. And they're still his best friends to this day. His best friends are his camp friends. And he's about to turn 80, and They're even having a meeting. And it has a picture of all of them, uh, when they became counselors. And it's amazing. And it's from 1953. And I said, "Dad, you have to send this to me." And he sent it to me with a glossary. about who everyone is and what they're doing now. And it's like, "This is Phil Holman.

He is now a judge. This is Arnie Goldstein. You know, he owns Martin's House of Cloth. This is Danny Gold. Danny Gold once gave Punchy Kramer a blowjob and we all watched. This is Cy Schwartz. He works at Clam King. This is, you know, blah, blah, blah. I say, "Dad, open or close with that." Has no sense. So, he went to camp until he became a counselor. And, you know, we think of counselors as adults. But you know, they're 16-year-old kids. So for each camper, I had to fill out a form, every week for each camper.

And he would say something like: "Is he behaving well? Is he sleeping? Did he brush his teeth? Did he go to the bathroom?" And underneath it said "L/H." And my dad didn't know what that meant. But he was too embarrassed to ask anyone. So, he just used his logic and said, "It's okay. It comes after the bath, so it must mean... 'loose or hard.'" So, during one summer...my dad had his campers come get him. ...after they took shit...so I could go look at it...and make a rough estimate...if it really was loose or hard.

I love that. It just means that there's a generation of old people in therapy... who say, "Well, I had a camp counselor who was like obsessed with my shit. Is that...?" You were sexually abused. Oh, it meant "letter home." But thank God he didn't ask. That would have been very embarrassing.