It’s Never Too Late To Do Stand-Up

It’s never too late to start a new career, even if your better working days are behind you. While some people migrate to Florida to find comfort in quiet retirement, others get on stage, willingly subjecting themselves to the judgment of total strangers. Gid Pool opted for option number two.

He was 61, when he enrolled into a class that taught stand-up. Today you can find him performing at clubs, theaters, colleges and cruise ships raking in as much as $1000 per night. But it hasn’t been an easy road, and certainly not an overnight success. Stand-up comedy isn’t for everyone. And at times, when his “old man” jokes fall flat with the younger audience, doubts creep in. Pool calls it the dark side of comedy, but manages to pass through it like the 65 year old stand-up comedian that could. So, what’s his secret? Two things keep him going: the rush of a successful performance and the love of comedy.

“To stand up on-stage,” he says, “and to be able to say something that you made up—and to have a couple of hundred people laugh at it—there’s no feeling like it in the world.”

Pool’s story is a great reminder that life isn’t over once your kids leave for college.

“I was thinking last night about how lucky I am, at this stage in my life, to have something that really gets me up in the morning,” he said in a recent interview with Wall Street Journal. “Today I’m part of a generation that has literally been given a second chance to live a first life. People say you don’t get a do-over in life. I beg to differ.”

Check out Gid Pool at McCurdy’s Comedy Club, courtesy of YouTube!

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