Before I got out of the car she said “Do you have something to tell me?”

I, in my normal post-work-commute bleary-eyed-haze, said “Um, no. Do I?”

Mrs. C: “There’s a phone message for you from the Letterman show. They want you to start submitting jokes or something.”

What?!

See, I had spent the previous three years submitting monologue jokes to The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, freelance. I’d send in two or three jokes a day by fax. Every (long) once in a while he’d tell one on air and then I’d get a check from his production company, Big Dog Productions. I didn’t take it all too seriously.

One night in bed I was reading Sports Illustrated and saw a column by Bill Scheft. At the time he wrote a regular column for SI called The Show – but he was also David Letterman‘s long time lead monologue joke writer. Since I had grown up watching – and idolizing – David Letterman on NBC‘s Late Night, and since I was now writing jokes in a semi-professional manner, I figured why not send Bill Scheft some of my material? Couldn’t hurt.

So I printed out 20 pages (literally) of topical jokes I’d recently written and mailed them to Bill care of the Late Show. Like most writing submissions it felt like – and was – a real long shot. Odds are I’d never hear anything back, so I figured.

The odds seemed so long, in fact, that I had neglected to even mention sending the package to my wife. What was the point, really?

But then came that fine June day in 2003. And that unforgettable look on my wife’s face. And that amazing voice mail from Bill Scheft.

The gist of Bill’s message was that he had received my package and he liked my jokes. In fact, he had liked my jokes so much he had chosen one to present to Dave and Dave had told it on that night’s show which they had just taped! Oh yeah, and he would like me to begin submitting jokes to the show on a regular basis.

It took several listens before the whole message sank in.

I stayed up that night past my bedtime to watch Dave tell the following joke, which I wrote!

In an effort to curb the spread of monkeypox the U.S. government banned the sale of prairie dogs

I hope this doesn’t affect the price of a Whopper.

Here’s the audio of Dave telling it:

Download audio file (dave_062503.mp3)

Words absolutely cannot describe the feeling of hearing Dave tell that joke, knowing the words that would come out of his mouth before he said each one. Seeing one of my all-time comedy heroes say something that I’d written was one of the most exciting moments of my life.

Since then I’ve submitted jokes to the show just about every day that they’ve taped. Dave has told more than 100 of my jokes now and it still never gets old hearing him tell one of mine.

Dave is still the king of late night, in my book.

You can see and hear the jokes that I’ve written for Dave (and also my Leno jokes) right here.

Oh yeah, and a big thanks and smooch to Mrs. Chumworth for putting up with all of my joke writing (and other) shenanigans all these years…