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BOWDOIN: You both seem to draw from your own experience in your comedy. What is that about? Is some part of it acting, putting on a character?

KERRY ELSON: I’m writing, a lot of times, about myself. Most of the time, about something that I feel a little bit embarrassed about, and writing about the thing I’m embarrassed about helps kind of pierce the embarrassing feeling.

I tend to do more self-deprecating humor. If it is about my daily life or my own work, it’s a way to, honestly, just kind of cope with and help myself process thoughts and feelings I have.

It makes me feel better to laugh at them. And in terms of performing or acting a little bit, sometimes I kind of exaggerate my own voice, and that ends up being like a character.

Like, I had something I just wrote that was inspired by me going to my very first professional basketball game. As a person who had gone to a lot of theater, I was trying to make sense of the game by connecting it to my experience of theater. And I was realizing that it was kind of dorky of me to be, like, “Wait, I get it, that’s the orchestra seats, those are the balcony.”

So, I wrote this kind of exaggerated version of a very theatrical person who was just being ridiculous. So I guess, acting a little bit, performing, is a way to make it funnier. For it to be funny, you have to exaggerate it. If I just did it about me, it wouldn’t be enough.

CHIP LEIGHTON: I definitely draw on my own experience. The stuff that I do on social media, it took me a little while to figure out what works in that medium—I tell people I started posting on TikTok in early 2021, and after six months, I had, like, seventeen followers. I was thinking about deleting my account, actually. What I was trying to do was kind of weird funny—it’s tough to even describe, but it wasn’t about my life.

And then, I posted something about marriage that kind of reflected my experience, and it went viral. It was something about having teenagers, and it went viral. So, I learned, eventually, that it’s the relatability that works in that medium, and that’s what leads people to share and follow you and that sort of thing. So, because it’s relatability, it’s going to be about my life or about things that happen in my life.

And, yeah, there’s definitely a performance aspect. Not for everything. I do lists of things I’ve apologized to my wife for, and they’re deadpan—so that’s definitely a performance, because I’m recording myself, and it’s not the way I normally talk in real life.

BOWDOIN: I know that domestic life has been fodder for satire and humor for a very long time—people like James Thurber and Erma Bombeck and others. What do you think it is, besides the relatability, that makes it so funny to tell a story about your mom or your kid or your spouse? Why is it so inherently attractive to other humans?

LEIGHTON: I think it’s just that it’s such a big part of life, right? Like, the stuff I do about raising kids and being married, that’s a huge part of life, so you’re going to have a lot of experiences, and some of them are going to be funny, some of them are going to be frustrating. There’s just a lot to draw from. And what I’ve found with a lot of content is just how universal some of these little things are—for instance, maybe it drives you crazy how your husband, like, the sounds he makes when he eats cereal or whatever.

And you might think, “That’s just him,” or “That’s just our relationship.” But then, in a TikTok environment, you have a thousand people jumping in, “Oh, my gosh, that’s the same exact conversation I had with my husband.” There’s something special about people having a shared experience.

ELSON: I think that’s true. I feel like because it is so core to our lives and our experiences—our relationships with our family members and the special people in our lives—that it just taps into something very deep and emotional. It sometimes says something that’s unspoken.

I’ve written a couple of little pieces about my mom—thank you, Mom, for being okay with this! I wrote something about how she would always ask me, when I went home, if I wanted any old things that she had been saving for me. And I got a lot of feedback about that—not that many, but six emails from people I’d never met! And that does not happen to me.

I think there was something about that where it made people think about their mom and the deep connection that they had with their mom. They were, like, “Oh, my god, my mom does that, too,” but it was like somebody kind of named it, in a way. It was just, it was a point of delight. For some people, they said it made them nostalgic for their mom and it hit on something kind of central. I like reading that kind of stuff, too. I think it hits on something very deep and personal for all of us.

BOWDOIN: Is there a kind of freedom with comedy in general, that comedy provides people a way to talk about things that are hard?

LEIGHTON: Yeah. Some of what I do, it’s intentionally meant to sound ridiculous, right? So, I apologized to my wife because I was standing in front of the kitchen drawer she wanted to open and how that drives her crazy. But it’s kind of ridiculous to apologize for that, right? So some of what I do, it’s not clear who the subject or the object of the joke is, right?

You talked about this a little bit, Kerry, but blowing up an everyday moment to an exaggerated extreme, I think that takes the power away from it a little bit, takes the tension out of it, and makes it easier to laugh at. I went to this wedding, once, where the officiant said to the bride and groom, “Don’t let the little things become the big things.” I think that summarizes some of what I do. If you can laugh at the little things, like whatever happens in the kitchen, it takes away their power and they don’t become these big things that fester, that bother you.

I’m just a big fan of the power of laughter to reduce stress and defuse things.

BOWDOIN: Kerry, what about you, do you think comedy provides a sense of freedom to say things that maybe are harder to say?

ELSON: Yeah, maybe so. I admire people who can do really hard-hitting political satire, and that’s not something I feel like I’m very good at. And I think that when they say things, it provides a bit of relief—and maybe, potentially, with the relief, you get renewed spirit to keep working toward what you want.

I’m thinking about how Hannah Gadsby, in a special she had a long time ago, said something about how she almost didn’t want the audience to be feeling a release of tension. Because she wanted the anger to be pushing us to do better. And so, thinking a little bit about that, you want comedy to provide people with release, but not so much that they sit and don’t do things they maybe could to work for change.

BOWDOIN: What makes you laugh?

ELSON: What makes me laugh? I like really silly, theatrical, goofy comedians. I love Abbott Elementary, which I can relate to because it’s a teaching show. My friends make me laugh. My partner makes me laugh. I love just little moments of wordplay and delight.

LEIGHTON: All kinds of things, I would say. I don’t have, I wouldn’t say, a sophisticated sense of humor. I mean, one of my favorite shows, for many years, was America’s Funniest Home Videos—you know, physical comedy and just silly things that happen in real life. With TikTok or Instagram, I love seeing random people with an interesting take or a funny story to tell. What’s so great about comedy today is there are so many voices that have a way to reach people that didn’t exist before.

I love that. I mean, there are pluses and minuses to social media, I get it, but there are some amazing pluses in terms of more creative people reaching more other people than was ever possible.

BOWDOIN: Do you ever get tired of it? Do you ever feel, like, “I just don’t have it in me, right now, to be funny”?

LEIGHTON: I’ll go through phases where I might work on the social media stuff for two or three days, and then not do anything for two or three days. I don’t follow the social media experts’ advice—I’ve always tried to go for quality over quantity, so I post much less often than most large accounts do. I just wrote a book, and I would sort of dive into the book for two or three weeks, and then get totally away from it for a while.

I need to do that, from a creative process, and sometimes you just don’t want to be talking into a camera. Most of the time, actually.

ELSON: I spend most of my time not really working on comedic things. I do it in spurts. During school break, I’ll tell myself, “Okay, you should work on something,” or maybe on the weekend. But, to be honest, sometimes I am too tired to work on anything. A lot of times I don’t feel like it. And sometimes I don’t feel funny, but I push through it anyway, because I know that it brings me so much happiness to just do it. Sometimes I’m writing and I’m, like, “I don’t know, this doesn’t feel very funny.”

But sometimes I will write something that makes me giggle, and I really look forward to that. So I kind of just keep going anyway. It usually takes me a few drafts, and I’ve learned to be, like, “It’s okay it’s not funny right now. [Laughter] Maybe it’ll get funny later. Relax, just trust.”

BOWDOIN: One of the things I saw in both of your work is playing with the absurd—the title of your book, Chip (What Time Is Noon?), and, Kerry, a lot of your stuff. What makes something absurd?

LEIGHTON: On that title, I have heard from at least ten parents that their kid asked some version of that question. I’m not trying to make fun of teenagers. I’m just trying to make light of the absurd, because, is it that your parents didn’t explain that to you? Or is it because you’re a dumb kid? Or whatever.

I think it’s neither, it’s just one of those things that’s so basic that you would never think, as a parent, “Oh, I should talk to my kid about what noon means.” And for the kid, if no one’s ever said that to you, I guess you might not know it. Stuff that’s absurd is just kind of funny, right?

I don’t know exactly why, but there’s so many text messages like that, that are just, you know, “Did Grandma have kids?”

[Laughter] I don’t know, what do you think, Kerry?

ELSON: I feel it’s just a fun place to go, like, “We’re going off the deep end.” It’s so fun to just go off the deep end with somebody, you know? And you have to take it there to make it extra funny. In humor writing they say, “You gotta keep pushing. You gotta make it strange.”

I think that’s the most fun part, when it gets to that point, for a lot of humor and comedy.

BOWDOIN: Are your first-graders funny?

ELSON: There are things that they do that are funny, and, unfortunately, I forget to write them down. But the thing is, I tend to take them really seriously and I take teaching so seriously that, when I’m with them, I really try to just listen to them and take what they’re saying for real.

But sometimes, later, I’ll be, like, “That was pretty silly.” But, I tend not to laugh at them too much, because they’re just trying the best that they can to be in the world. So, I kind of try to be with them, if I can, in their humanity.

BOWDOIN: Chip, are your kids self-conscious around you now? Are they, like, “Oh, my god, I don’t want to say anything around Dad, because he’s going to make it into a routine”?

LEIGHTON: Not really, I don’t think. I mean, I get feedback—because I’m always taking notes on my phone—like, “Not everything is content, you know.” The main feedback now, because the teenager stuff started with their funny text messages, but now it’s a compilation of other people’s, is, “You gotta make it much clearer those are not all from us. All my friends think I write all those messages.”

So, it’s kind of funny, but, no, they’ve been both good sports. Generally, they’re just not that impressed with me.

BOWDOIN: Does anything feel out-of-bounds to you? Are there jokes that you just wouldn’t make? And is that just for you, or do you think comedy should stay away from certain things?

ELSON: Well, my writing buddies and comedy people I talk to, we always talk about how we don’t want to ever punch down and make fun of anybody who’s in a vulnerable or oppressed position. So, we are always editing and looking at each other’s work with that in mind.

I don’t think comedians should punch down. I don’t think we have to, and I think that we can do better. The elimination of the punch-down is just going to make the comedy stronger.

I also personally am not comfortable putting profanity in my work, simply because I don’t want anyone to be worried about me teaching children and saying anything inappropriate. My teaching life and school life don’t really cross over, but I never want anyone to look at work I put out and be concerned about me being with children. So I always want to make sure that it looks benign and pretty gentle.

LEIGHTON: That all makes sense. In my own work, I stay away from politics completely. You don’t have to; obviously, some people are very effective at political comedy. I also keep my work PG-13, because, similar to you, Kerry, with profanity, I’ve been conscious, from day one, that my kids see what I do—and their teachers, their friends—and I wouldn’t want to be sharing stuff that was age-inappropriate or whatever. So, those are the big things for me. And the other thing is, I’m trying not to make fun of anybody in what I do.

With the teenager stuff, I call it “celebrating teen humor.” It’s not making fun of kids because they don’t know something; it’s just highlighting the humor in the situation and the fact that something we never thought about talking about leads to some funny questions. Some people think it might be an indictment of a parent or a kid or a spouse, but it’s never meant in that way. And sometimes it’s tough, especially with the satire and the deadpan stuff , it’s not always clear to everybody that it’s meant in a satirical way.

On social media, most people get it, because they’re in that environment. One of my big series is things I’ve apologized to my wife for, and I’ve had some articles written about that. There was one in the Daily Mail in the UK, and because it was being explained out of context, the comment section of the article was crazy. It was, like, “Oh, you gotta get divorced, your wife’s terrible.”

And I’m thinking, “Okay, you’re missing a bit of the spirit of this!” So I think the context definitely helps, and the intent. Sometimes it’s tough to make your intent clear.

BOWDOIN: So, if you’re at Reunion and somebody says, “Well, is it fun?” what would you say?

LEIGHTON: I had my reunion a couple of years ago, and it was funny because I started this whole thing after the prior reunion, and so people said, “Oh, I see you online all the time.” And somebody I went to ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ with, his wife was a fan and was, like, “Oh, I can’t believe I’m meeting you.” I’m thinking, “I’m as boring as I ever was in real life, don’t worry.” [Laughs]

But, yeah, I mean, what’s not fun about connecting? I have people who connect with me that say, “Oh, thank you. I share this stuff with my mom group or my spouse or kids, and it helps bring something bright to my day.” I mean, all I’m trying to do is give people a little positive. I’m not curing cancer, here, just give’em a little laugh at the end of the day or whatever, and that feels good, right?

ELSON: It’s been a very important part of my life. It’s been so good. And I do like having pieces in publication, and it’s been really rewarding, and I feel proud, but also, it’s been really fun to make friends. It’s been so nice to meet people and make these connections and just have these relationships with people that I’ve met through this humor writing community.

I’m so glad that I have this for myself, because I really do like writing and being creative, and I think I need that in my life. Just to have that as something I can just do any time I want is really special.

BOWDOIN: Is there anything either of you would want to ask the other?

ELSON: Well, I was thinking of a question for Chip. You touched on it a little bit, but just, if you want to share more about what it was like to start making work about your family.

LEIGHTON: I never show my kids in posts; that’s one line I draw, and I have to be careful about. My wife’s been in a few posts, and people love seeing that. But they all have a good sense of humor. If one of my kids said, “Hey, I want you to stop doing this,” then I would.

ELSON: I have another question. You’re presenting your work via TikTok and Instagram. And I will tell you, sometimes I just wish I didn’t like my phone so much! I’m just wondering what it’s like to always have notifications on and always be online, because your work is online. I feel like if I had all those comments, I might go bazonkers, and it would be too much for me. I wonder how you navigate that and help yourself turn it off, if necessary.

LEIGHTON: That’s a great question, because actually, I don’t like being on my phone a lot, and I usually don’t like being on social media that much. So even though this whole thing started with me just using TikTok and enjoying it, these days I don’t scroll through it for fun very often. Because it does take so much time just to reply to comments and create the material. I do wish I could do some of that effectively on a computer, but it’s just the way those platforms work, it’s most efficient to do everything on the phone.

So, yeah, that is one thing I don’t like: it does require time on the phone, and I’m still trying to navigate through that. I guess the way I address it is to not spend time doing other things on the phone, but I’m not saying that I’m successful with that. It’s tricky, because a lot of my content comes from the comments and from direct messages people send me. I don’t want to miss a gem of a text message that some parent sends [laughs]. But it is a bit of a quandary.

I have a question for you, Kerry. I’ve written a book, but it’s not like War and Peace, right? It’s a collection of text messages and there are some stories from my family and stuff, so, the writing thing is still a bit new.

Do you enjoy the writing process?

ELSON: Most of the time I kind of do. I think it’s been a big step for me, over the course of learning more about this writing, to tolerate it being bad. I think I used to, when I was younger, get more frustrated and have writer’s block, and I would be, like, “Oh, my god, this is so bad,” and I couldn’t tolerate it. And then I took a class, and the instructor showed how he went through the process from brainstorm through rough draft through the final draft. And he showed how he tweaked it over time, and it was really powerful for me.

I got to see, “Oh, wait, his rough draft wasn’t actually that funny.” And so, just learning to tolerate it, literally, being, like, “This is bad and it’s okay.” Learning to tolerate the uncertainty of not being successful has been really helpful.

LEIGHTON: Do you feel like you can reliably tell if it’s funny? Or do you need other people’s perspective on it?

ELSON: If I write a line that makes me giggle, that is usually a good sign. Because if it makes me giggle, then I feel like it has a chance that somebody else is going to laugh at it. I think at the very beginning when I first started to do this, I wasn’t always sure, and I would really need to send it to somebody else. And I still do need to do that, but I think I’ve learned more about how to come up with the premise, in the initial brainstorming, to know whether something has hit the humor mark. Where it’s, like, “I feel like this has potential.”

Then I abandon ideas, too. So I think just over practice, over time. But I still definitely need to send it to people. I do really value feedback from peers. And in humor writing, there’s a lot of trading of pieces and feedback and stuff, and I really am so grateful for people to read. And I like doing it for other people, too.

LEIGHTON: That’s helpful to hear, the giggle test makes sense. I once heard a creator say, “When I look back at my video draft, if it doesn’t make me laugh, I just delete it and move on.” And I’ve found that’s true. I can’t always tell, but, if it makes me laugh when I look at it repeatedly, I think, “Okay, that’s probably funny.” But sometimes these things work, sometimes they don’t.

ELSON: Sometimes you look at it so much and you’re tweaking it so much that you do stop laughing. And then in that case, you kind of do have to send it to someone else.

LEIGHTON: Yeah, that’s true.

ELSON: I don’t know if that ever happens with one of your videos.

LEIGHTON: Oh, definitely. There are text messages in the book that, the first time I heard them, I was dying laughing, and maybe the first five times, I was laughing. I’ve read them 150 times now.

But you have to put yourself in the shoes of someone hearing it for the first time.

You have to make sure you don’t lose that moment of discovery.

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Alison Bennie is editor of ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Magazine.

Brian Rea is an illustrator, artist, author, and educator based in Stockholm, Sweden.

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This story first appeared in the Winter 2025 issue of ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Magazine. Manage your subscription and see other stories from the magazine on the ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Magazine website.