How to Raise a Comedian Without Really Trying

David Wood’s childhood was a constant craze of homelessness, hustling, and fleeing one failed life for the next. But it’s not until his darkest moment arrives that things get seriously funny.

Illustrations by Noah Van Sciver

I can’t say my mother—a single parent who gave her all to raise three renegade kids on her own—was overjoyed about her eldest child’s decision to forgo law school and venture west to Los Angeles to become a stand-up comedian, but true to her nature she never said a word to me—or anyone else—that wasn’t encouraging.

And this from a woman who rarely had things go her way. Her mother died days after she was born. She suffered through a ghastly San Francisco childhood during the Great Depression; her father was an Irish dandy barfly who spent quality time in neighborhood taverns rather than face the responsibility of child rearing. Her cold, distant brother—eight years her senior—was consumed with his own survival. From the get-go, Lisabeth Lynn Riddle was on her own.

Yet relying on her own wits and gumption, she somehow made it through childhood without losing the habit of looking for the good in people—who almost universally let her down. The woman she beca…