Sophomore Addison Brown doesn’t care what anyone thinks.
He walks up to the front of the blue lunch table with no hesitation. The 10 girls sitting give him a confused look as he stands in front of them, elated and twitching with excitement. He’s going to tell them a joke. In the middle of the lunchroom chaos with students trying to get through the aisle and find their seat; he’s going to tell them a joke.
“Hey guys, how’s everybody doing today?”
The group looks at him blankly. He is 6 foot 2, dressed in a brown leather jacket and wearing a square ring on his finger. As he talks, his hands move up and down; guiding along the conversation. He asks them if they want to hear a joke today. They nod their heads politely. Addison dives right in.
He begins flailing his arms around, telling a detailed and elaborate story about a man and a giraffe who walk into a bar in Philadelphia. He makes sure to “speak” the joke rather than just “tell” it. Tables nearby are watching him. They notice his excitement; hear the liveliness in his voice.
“Ok, then the giraffe has some shots of scotch and passes out…”
When he reaches the end of the story he has the table’s full attention. Everyone around him is watching; all tables near and even some staff. He tells them, “It’s not a lion, it’s a giraffe!” than ends it the same way he does every time, throwing his arms up in the air and yelling “ahhhhhhh!”
Everyone around him does the same thing.
Addison Brown started telling jokes in sixth grade at Belinder.
He began by casually telling them to his table at lunch; typically ones he looked up on the Internet the night before. He didn’t branch out to other tables initially but by the end of that year he was walking to his friends sitting nearby and doing bits.
He was never nervous. Never scared of what people thought.
He’s never been phased very easily. He’s always felt sort of fearless.
When he was 7 years old his mom Jodi and dad Quentin divorced. Addison still doesn’t know or understand why, he just knows that his dad now lives in Minnesota. Addison’s father is the inspiration for his comedy– they always joke around when Addison visits him. They like to drop one-liners from anything from “The Scorpion King” to “The Expendables.”
But when his father had to leave, their family seemed to be torn apart. His mom was furious at his father.
His younger brother never even got a chance to meet him. But just like with his jokes; Addison never got phased. He just moved on. He was fearless.
It’s this same fearlessness he attributes to being able to stand in front of lunch tables and deliver jokes.
He feels excited when telling them, and he enjoys the comedy. Addison jokingly says that “What could be better than being paid to tell jokes?” But in reality; he has no aspirations of being a comedian. He just enjoys brightening people’s days and the feeling he gets when performing.
“[Making others feel better] is the core of it, that’s definitely it,” Jodi said. “I see that all the time. He really seems to have a gift and an ability to do that, to make people smile and to find a way to brighten their day.”
* * *
Mr. Nickel’s first hour freshman World Geography class disperses into groups; getting 20 minutes of free time to work on homework. Others in the classroom pull out worksheets, some open up their classroom books. Addison walks up to the teacher’s desk.
“Mr. Nickels would you mind If I tell a joke?,” Addison asks.
“Will it be appropriate?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Nickels grants him the opportunity. Addison has a lot of friends in the class. They “egg him on,” telling him that he needs to get up in the front of the classroom. He walks up to the front with the support of his peers. To Addison, this was the start of it all.
He had moved from table to table telling jokes in middle school, but in high school had kept the jokes to his own table. He had yet to branch out. Addison stands in front of the whole class with no reputation at all. But he’s fine; he has an “underlying self-confidence” as his mom puts it.
He starts to tell a joke. The joke is about a kid who hears something at the top of a mountain. There’s this little boy, he is 7-years-old, and one day he heard a mysterious noise. He goes on for what he felt was close to 20 minutes; excited and “speaking” it to the whole class.
He finishes the joke: “I can’t tell you, you’re not a monk!” Mr. Nickels chuckles, some of his friends that he’s already told the joke to say
“Really Addison?” but most of the class is cracking up. He returns to his seat and looks at the clock.
Next class period, everyone will tell him to stand up again.
* * *
After two weeks of telling jokes and reciting his favorite stand-up routines from Brian Regan in his first hour World Geography class, Addison decided to start to move from table to table in the lunchroom.
He says that a lot of the confidence to do this came from theater and performing in his past.
“We used to live out in the Blue Valley area and he did some workshops when he was little, where he would get on stage,” Jodi said. “So he was kind of introduced to it pretty young.”
His mom has always seen this knack to perform. She feels that Addison has always had an ability to keep his younger brother entertained. Last year, he went out for frequent Fridays and “The Grapes of Wrath,” and even though he didn’t get any parts, he enjoyed it. He remembers having fun in his drama class; he loved being able to put on “different concepts of plays.”
He got the chance to put on a shadow play last year with then senior Travis Jannie. They wrote the scene together: “If Mickey Mouse ran into Darth Vader at a Post Office…” In the project, they had to stand behind a screen and act with their shadows. Junior Spencer Davis was in his class last year and remember Addison had “lots of energy.”
Now Addison doesn’t pursue theater but loves to perform; interacting with kids in the lunchroom. Even when he doesn’t have any jokes prepared on a given day, he tries to make others feel better. He talks to other tables at lunch whether he has a joke or not.
“I really like to brighten up peoples days, like if they have some sadness situations,” Addison said. “It started off with me going around and asking ‘How you doing? You doing alright?’ It wasn’t really even about the jokes.”
* * *
“Brightening up people’s days sort of brightens up mine. Noticing that I’ve made an impact on somebody – that I’ve turned around their day – that makes me feel pretty good about myself because I know that when I’m down, when I’ve got some problems of my own, that person more than likely is going to be there for me.”
It’s 9 a.m and Addison Brown stands in the cold, picking up branches and leaves. He’s not allowed to use the chain saw, so he just picks up debris that was cut down; placing it in the pile. He doesn’t need to be here. No one forced him; not his mom, not his church. He’s driven by Roanoke Park every day and has seen the reconstruction. He decided to contact the leader of the project, Scott Burnett, telling him he wanted to get involved.
Now every Saturday he goes to the park and helps with their clear-cutting; pushing aside branches and clearing out space. Addison also tries to volunteer at as many other places as he can with some of his close friends. Last year, they helped out at Asbury with the church fair. They didn’t have to. They just asked the church if there was anything they could do to help.
Addison enjoys seeing people’s faces when he helps them out. This is what he looks for when he tells jokes. When he tries to brighten someone’s day.
At school, Addison takes every opportunity to make people feel better; not just in the lunchroom. When he walks in the hall, he enthusiastically says hello to everyone he sees. He remembers names. He remembers faces. He doesn’t know how long he will continue to tell jokes during lunch, but he always hopes to make connections with people.
He knows he’ll never stop being excited about it.
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