Jo Koy: A Joke About His Stepdad

Jo Koy (0:04)

I fucked around a lot. I was bad, I was a bad kid. Fucking bad. Until my stepdad, until my mom got married to Sergeant Fred Harrison. And that's why, like, people in blended families, God bless you, because they're, yeah, like, it's a hard job to be in a blended family, but...

But I needed it. I needed Sergeant Fred Harrison. This was from the mountains of West Virginia. Six foot four, big motherfucker. Served two tours of Vietnam, two Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars, and a CIV badge. It's a bad motherfucker.

And I needed him. To this day, I still make my bed. You can come to my hotel right now. My bed is perfectly made. That's Sergeant Fred Harrison. Fix your bed. A messy bed is a messy head. He used to say that to me all the time. And to this day, I still fix my bed. To this day, anywhere I'm at, I fix my bed. And that's because Sergeant Fred Harrison. Rest in peace. I love him.

But he was from the mountains of West Virginia, and he lied on his application. He was 17 when he fought in Vietnam. He lied. And there's pictures all over the house. There's pictures of him in the hospital when he was just a kid, 17 I used to ask him all the time, like, why did you lie, Fred? Why did you lie to go fight this war? You were 17 And he just looked at me right in the face. I was like, you ever shit in the snow before?

No, I never shit in the snow before. Yeah, exactly. You don't know what that is. We didn't have central plumbing. We lived in the mountains of West Virginia. We had to own outhouses. We had to dig holes in the snow. You ever hold your shit and hit a block of ice with the shovel and shit fly out your ass?

Yeah, I've never taken a shit while holding a shovel. Exactly. That's why I joined the military. All my uncles died in the coal mines. I wasn't going to go work in the coal mines. My daddy died in the coal mines. I ain't working in the coal mines. I joined the military, and that's what he did. 17, he went, fought his first tour, and he got hit shrapnel all up his right side. You see the pictures, it's crazy. Just his whole right side just scarred up and down. And that's when he got his first Purple Heart and his first Bronze Star. And I don't know who gives it to him.

I don't know who gave it to him. Let's just say the major came and gave it to him. Gave him a Bronze Star, and gave him a Purple Heart. And the major looked at him and was like, thank you, soldier, for serving this country. You're free to go home. And he looked at him and went, you have a shit in the snow before.

No, I've never shit in the snow before. I don't know what that has to do with it. Exactly, put me back in. He went through a whole year getting better, and then they put him back in. I think 18 and a half, he went back in, and that's when he got hit by a sniper. Entry wound right here above his right shoulder. The entry wound was the size of a dime. His whole shoulder just blown out like this. That's how they put his arm back together. I guess the same guy that put his arm back together did my teeth.

But that's how his arm was. The rest of his life, his arm just dangled like that. And I remember that's when they gave him his second Purple Heart and his second Bronze Star and then his CIV badge. And that's the one he was like...

That's the one where he said, when you bare me, Bubba, you make sure I don't care about the Purple Hearts or the Bronze Star, you put that CIV badge on me. That's the one you bare me with. You hear me? And I was like, yeah, Fred, I got you. And we did. We put that on his chest. And, um, and, um, and now whoever. The major was like, you're free to go home. Thank you for serving this country, soldier. And Fred just looked at him and was like, yeah, I don't think I can wipe my ass right now.

And he went on to serve 22 more years for the US. Army.

And he retired young. He retired at 39 years old. He was just a young guy. And then we all moved to Vegas to be with my grandmother, because my grandmother had like terminal cancer right out of high school. Right when I was 18, we all moved to Vegas. And Fred, that was my only friend. And he was my only friend, and I was his only friend. And he had all this money. He had like retirement, disability, and all these all these checks. And he's 39 One thing they didn't take care of was therapy, and he needed it. Definitely needed it. Soldiers do need it. And he would just walk around and just gamble all the time. And it'd be me, 18, and I was his only friend. He would just drink, he'd just polish off a fifth of whiskey. He'd be like, here you go. Drink that. I'm like, I'm only 18, Fred. He's like, I was 17 when I fought the war. You can drink half that motherfucker.