In my last blogpost, I wrote about the time my family put our heads together to come up with a funny question to ask Jon Stewart when we were at a taping of his show. That reminded me of another time when we found ourselves in a comedy writing pressure cooker.

It was seven years ago and my friend Jan Gladstone's daughter Randi was getting married in Florida. They invited our family to come down for a pre-wedding visit, and Margot and Greta spent a lot of time with Randi and her fiance, Timo. A day or two before she walked down the aisle, the bride-to-be asked Margot, who was 13 at the time, if she would stand up and talk at the reception. Randi knew that Margot had been doing stand up comedy ever since she won $100 at a talent show in our town when she was in fourth grade.

Margot accepted the invitation, but didn't have any good material for the occasion. So the four of us went to a hot dog restaurant and started throwing around ideas. We bought Margot some index cards and she wrote the jokes down and ran through it a couple of times. When the time came, she stood on a chair and delivered it while Greta filmed it sideways, which is another family tradition.