Where kids learn to swear

Naomi Fitter: It’s been funny to watch the kids like figure some things out that you don’t want them to.

Like, “Ooh, that’s a bad word. I dropped something. What should I say?” And like pronounce it wrong at first and then look at your face and iterate till they, they find the right pronunciation of the swear.

Andrea Marie: We are Moms Unhinged, a nationally touring standup comedy show. Join us in our podcast as we explore everything from motherhood, midlife, crisis, marriage, divorce, online dating, menopause, and other things that irritate us.

Hello everyone, and welcome to Moms Unhinged, the podcast. I’m your host, Andrea Marie, and I am joined by the wonderful Naomi Fitter. Hello Naomi.

Naomi Fitter: Hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, great to have you. And we recently had Naomi on a show in one of our Corvallis shows. She’s based in Corvallis. And just thought we’d get her on the podcast, talk about what it’s like to be a comedian mom, and just talk about motherhood in general so we all can feel a little better about our own journeys.

That’s the main goal here. So yeah, so Naomi, we were just talking before we got started here, and you have two children, three and five.

Naomi Fitter: 3 and 5.. I’m in the middle of it. I’m very tired. If I forget how to speak, that’s very normal for me.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Yeah that is, there is no sleep happening a that time. Yeah so, is it a boy and a girl or what?

Naomi Fitter: Boy and a girl. The older kiddo is a boy. My daughter is the three-year-old.

Pregnancy during the pandemic

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Awesome. And we were just talking too, you had a pandemic pregnancy. Yeah, yeah, so had your oldest right in the middle of everything that was happening.

What was that like?

Naomi Fitter: Yeah, he was born in June 2021, so it was like a dicey period. We also had those giant wildfires in 2020 in Oregon. I guess, you know, it’s a recurring thing I’m sure in Colorado too, but in Corvallis and Oregon generally that year it was so bad we had to stay inside, so we couldn’t go like out to different places that October.

We could barely stay inside. We had to get like air filters. I thought it would do something, you know, strange to my kiddo. So a lot of interesting journey there. Also early in the pandemic and like I had a virtual baby shower, if that gives you a little indication of some experience.

Andrea Marie: Gosh. Yeah oh man, a Zoom baby shower. That’s just, wow.

Naomi Fitter: We had fun with it, but it’s different, yeah.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, yeah. And like there must have been so much… I mean, we were all so worried back at that time and like there must have been so much worry. Like, and you, how did you do like doctor visits and things like that?

Naomi Fitter: It was, at the time it was like, you know, partner only by special permission, only at certain visits. So it was pretty intense, a little bit scary and isolating. Luckily, you know, my, my OB was great, like very professional experience, and I felt okay throughout the journey, but, that was a bit different too.

I think I was allowed to have a ride-along during the very first ultrasound and, like, one or two other visits. So yeah, very locked down and everybody masked up out here, in that like 2020 to 2021 corridor.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Yeah, and I imagine just so much concern over, like, making sure you don’t get COVID and, like, you know, just you must have just been not going out hardly at all.

Naomi Fitter: Yeah, very cautious. There are upsides though. I don’t wanna be all gloom and doom. So one great thing, nobody ever touched my belly. Nobody.

Andrea Marie: Get your hands off me, mister.

Naomi Fitter: Yeah, yeah. I wrote like a little article like, “Finally, the perfect time to have a baby.” You can vomit right before your Zoom meeting. I didn’t do it today, by the way, but you know, you can have morning sickness, go to work. Nobody can even smell on breath. Nobody’s touching your stomach. Yeah, some advantages.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, yeah. And so were you working at the time? Were you going into work?

Naomi Fitter: I was working from home most of the time. We actually had a little rotation ’cause, I work in like a lab facility, so we had to like have people on the ground, make sure everything’s going okay. But we had to do it in a rotation, only one or two people allowed there at a time. So mostly from home, sometimes from work, but just like a big empty building and my big pregnant self. Yeah.

Andrea Marie: Wow. Wow, that is wild. And then of course, your husband was allowed to be at the birth, right?

Naomi Fitter: Luckily, yes. Yeah, luckily. Although that one was a lot longer than the second one, so maybe he could have saved some time or it would’ve been a little less agonizing.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. He was a great though, really good, you know, coaching me through it and stuff.

Yeah, and then even like, even, you know, shopping and getting everything ready, that must have been harder as well. Although, I don’t know, maybe we just order everything online nowadays, so who knows?

Washing groceries and early pandemic parenting

Naomi Fitter: At the time we were still like washing groceries. I don’t know if you ever went through that phase.

Andrea Marie: God, I kinda didn’t do that. I didn’t, I was like, “You know what?” I like, sorta drew a line. I was like, “I’m just gonna…” You know, I know I had friends who kept them in the garage for, like, two days before bringing them in. You know?

Naomi Fitter: Yeah. We did the time out for like, you know, non-perishables. Like this is too much to wash these off, but then we washed all the like fridge groceries. It was just a scary time ’cause, you know, I didn’t wanna get sick and maybe it impacts the baby.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Naomi Fitter: Definitely washing. But I can remember as we relaxed things like no mask in public, like stopping washing groceries.

They’re the baby milestones alongside like the pandemic progression milestones. So much more time to play with our kid when we stopped washing groceries.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Naomi Fitter: Just madness, yeah.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, so you had your baby kind of in the thick of the pandemic time. So I mean, I guess at that point too, you’re not really going out. I don’t think I left the house for a long time,

after having a baby. I just was too tired to go out and do anything.

And two, were, I was like germs anyway. But yeah, I’m sure that made it extra sensitive too for not even going out or having… Did family come and visit you or do your, is your family there?

Naomi Fitter: We had some family visit eventually. I feel like maybe we went out for our kid’s first birthday to Massachusetts, so that was like a big milestone, June 2022, traveling on a plane with baby. But we were definitely holed up for a while, like playing it very safe during the early days.

Andrea Marie: Right

Naomi Fitter: My parents would also drive out every summer. They were afraid to fly, but they would drive cross country from Ohio.

Andrea Marie: Oh gosh.

Naomi Fitter: So like during very early childhood, they’d get to see the kiddos about once a year and do that very long drive. But if you’re from Ohio, you’re kind of used to long drives.

My dad would be like, “I drove 11 hours today,” and that’s normal. That’s just what we have to do.

Andrea Marie: Oh man, no. I’m not a road tripper. I’m like, “No thank you. That sounds terrible.” But it always is nice when you have, then you’ve got your car there. You don’t have to… you know, can be a lot.

Naomi Fitter: Yeah.

Andrea Marie: Lot more scenic and stuff like that. And people at that age, whatever, they’ve got all the time in the world.

They can… I remember my dad drove out from Chicago to Colorado, and I think he drove, like, four hours a day. I was like, it took him like five days to get here. I was like, “Where?” I know. I’m like, “Where are you even stopping in Nebraska that even has a place where to stop?”

Naomi Fitter: I found a Great Wolf Lodge. I’m having a lot of fun. They got a water slide. I don’t know.

Yeah.

They were doing that for a while. We did get to see them, and my parents actually just moved to Salem, Oregon.

Andrea Marie: Oh, much closer.

Naomi Fitter: An hour away. Maybe they got sick of the drive or maybe the cute babies, like old enough to take care of themselves more than they used to, young enough to still be fun.

They’re like swooping in at just the right time now.

Going from one kid to two

Andrea Marie: Oh, that’s cool. That’s great. And then, so then you had your daughter in non-pandemic time. I mean, we’re still… definitely out of the crazy, deep woods deep woods of it. So what was that? I mean, that must have been just a really big difference in the experience.

I mean, it always is. Your first and second one are so different when, but like, did it feel like just so much more free, or what?

Naomi Fitter: It was more relaxed, like, you know, being, being able to bring your spouse to a doctor’s visit. That’s cool. You don’t have to plan in advance, like register them at the front desk. There are a lot of differences between first and second kid anyway, but we still didn’t have local family, so it was a bit of a adventure.

I left our older kiddo with a colleague.

Andrea Marie: Oh yeah.

Naomi Fitter: Looked for people to help take care of him while I was giving birth and luckily we found somebody who was like, “My kids are in high school. I’d love to hang out with a baby.”

Andrea Marie: Uh huh.

Naomi Fitter: But still some things, strange things being farther away from family, but a little bit easier.

The birth process was definitely smoother. The doctor was like, “I think you have two pushes.” My estimate is two pushes. She wasn’t right on the head, but it was a lot faster as well.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Naomi Fitter: One to two is a transition also. I think we had just gotten our, like, young, young adults with kid groove.

We could play zone defense with the parenting. One person go out and have fun or do a little bit of work or do something creative. And with two, we still haven’t quite regained our footing for like, parents can go have fun. Although we had a date night last night.

Andrea Marie: Oh, congratulations. That’s always like such… we’re like, “Woo-hoo. What? We’re getting…” And then the hard thing is you end up just talking about the kids the whole time. I’m like, “Okay, no more kid talk. No more logistics. No more.”

Naomi Fitter: It’s even worse ’cause the reason for the date is I had to go to talk to a venue about having comedy there in the future. And I was like, “Hey, do you wanna come along? I have to be at this venue at trivia night waiting around for the host to chat with him after.” Comedy on the front, child talk on the back.

Andrea Marie: Yeah yeah.

Naomi Fitter: Managed to have some fun in there too, yeah.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, yeah. It’s always hard when you’re kind of balancing.

Naomi Fitter: Mm-hmm.

Why the school still calls Mom

Andrea Marie: So many different things, so many different things. Now, are you still working? I forgot to ask that beforehand. Yeah, you’re still working.

Naomi Fitter: I’m still working, yeah.

Andrea Marie: So that’s a lot too, just juggling the schedule and figuring out, and then they get sick so much.

yeah I luckily have– I mean, he’s not exactly a house husband, but we like to call him house husband ’cause he works from home and his job is in tech, so it’s a little more flexible. So luckily he’s the point person for like picking up kids if they get sick, and he’s listed as the contact, but you know, they always call me anyway.

Yeah. It is funny. It is funny. It’s such a default, like, no, no, no. You know? ‘Cause I, I know, lots of other couples that are like that, too, where the husband has the more flexible schedule and he can be the one to but yep, they still call the mom. I don’t know. It’s just ’cause, old habits die hard. The patriarchy, we can’t get rid of it.

That’s amazing. And so I wanna find out how you got started in comedy. Have you been doing it for a long time? Or like what was your entry point into doing stand-up comedy?

How an introvert got into stand-up

Naomi Fitter: Yeah, I started 13 years ago, so the entry point was kind of like I’m more on the introverted side. It’s hard for me to command a room’s attention. So the sad but true, hopefully a little funny story is that like I’d have these tales I was telling people on the wall, you know, kind of wallflower style, and people would laugh and be entertained.

And finally someone was like, “You should do stand-up comedy.” Okay, I’ll try this. And it’s like a way that an introvert can command a room’s attention if their writing is good enough, is if their stage presence is good enough, I can actually get a room full of people to listen to me.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. You’ve got a microphone. You’re like up there. The lights are on you.

Naomi Fitter: It’s an introvert’s dream and nightmare at the same time, yeah.

Andrea Marie: That’s so true. And it is funny, I do find that there are a lot of introverted comedians, which people would not think about. You know, they think, “Oh, comedians, like gregarious, life the party, like totally…” You know. And that, for sure there are those people, but there are a lot of introverted comedians.

And I think, I don’t know, why do you think that might be?

Naomi Fitter: Maybe it’s the structure. It’s like I say something, you laugh or don’t laugh. I get the feedback and then I can improve or like know when it’s time to cut and run with a topic or cut off a bit. There’s something comforting about that even though it’s very public as well.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think that one of the things about stand-up is that really good writing is so central to really crafting the joke well, and I think a lot of introverts are more, you know, can be more, like, really deep thinkers, and they like, notice what’s weird about this? Oh, I’m noticing that this is a really strange idea.

Naomi Fitter: I’ve seen like comedy tutorial slide decks that are like, “Listen, listen to what people laugh at.” So maybe that’s part of it too.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Naomi Fitter: Just mention leaving some silences so you can get the feedback.

Andrea Marie: Right. Exactly. Exactly. Well, how did you get into it then?

Naomi’s first open mic

Naomi Fitter: I tried an open mic cold for the first time.

Andrea Marie: Oh, wow. Oof, man. People who do that, I’m like, “Whoa, wow. That’s amazing.”

Naomi Fitter: I gotta say at the time though, I have high praise for like how Helium Philadelphia was running their mic, ’cause the room was full, the crowd was warm, they were down to laugh the emcee like kept it going nicely and wasn’t like punching down at acts or anything.

So I felt like it went well. I was like, “Yeah, I can do this.” And then I did it again. My early comedy rate was like once a year, once every six months, ‘ cause it is pretty intimidating when that’s the, you know, the barrier to entry.

Like I have to sign up, and at Helium it was like the sign up in advance. I have to the previous Sunday about the Tuesday or whatever, and hopefully I get picked in the raffle.

So I was doing it, stringing along a bit, but I didn’t get picked that much. And the second time I went up, I didn’t know anything about comedy yet, so I ran the light. I ran the light. They turned the mic off.

Andrea Marie: Oof, dang. Oh, darn.

Naomi Fitter: I still tried to finish my bit, and then they turned the lights off and played music. So after that I took about a year recess.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, yeah.

That’ll turn you off it is scary. You know, I remember when I was first starting comedy, I couldn’t even see the light.

I don’t know I was like, “I don’t know what’s happening.” I was like, “Are you serious?” I could- I never saw it. Now, it feels like I can’t miss it, you know? Yeah.

Naomi Fitter: Yeah, yeah. But it can be intimidating, especially even now if it’s like a competition setting, you’re like, “Oh, can I pop on the stage to see where the light is?” ‘Cause you’re in the zone or you’re looking at some audience member. But obviously that was my mistake. That’s a total professional faux pas for comedians.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, yeah.

Naomi Fitter: That freaked me out for about a year. I took like a year recess, and then I took a couple classes and got a better sense of like, you know, what the process is, how to really, move up the ranks and excel and, write longer sets, edit, things like that. So, an interesting start and lucky I’m still here, I guess, after that scary.

Andrea Marie: I know. It is always surprising that I’m always like, “Huh, I haven’t quit yet. I have thought about it a lot, but I haven’t.”

Naomi Fitter: Uh huh.

Andrea Marie: Oh, man.

Naomi Fitter: Plays a lot of helpful roles.

 Turning life’s disasters into comedy

Naomi Fitter: I don’t know about for you, but like when something upsets me at work or just around town, knowing that I can turn it into a bit, turn the misadventure, the challenge into like a joke that hopefully people enjoy, it’s part of what’s keeping me going.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Naomi Fitter: There’s something to that.

You know, how much lemons do you wanna make? I don’t know. But at least as you get those lemons, you can like do something productive with it.

Andrea Marie: Exactly. Exactly. Well, I always say people don’t tell stories about the things that go right, so, you know, the more things that go wrong in your life, the more comedy is available.

Naomi Fitter: Yeah, that’s great.

Andrea Marie: So one of the things I always ask our, guests here on the podcast is for an unhinged moment in your, with either your own kids or growing up.

You know, it, I do feel like, again, like, we all need to be able to feel a little bit better about ourselves. I also think even just reflecting on, like, our own childhood and like, “Oh, wow, my mom was barely hanging on. I get it now,” you know? So, do you have an unhinged moment to share with us?

The parenting expectations that didn’t last

Naomi Fitter: Sure. I know, like, in my household growing up, we had three kids in the household, so even a higher challenge level than I’m facing now. There was a lot of yelling, and there was some like, throwing of objects and swear words. And I definitely thought going into parenting that like, I would do better.

I gotta say with the three-year-old and the five-year-old like, a lot more swearing than I would like. Which is kind of a funny contrast to like, how I present in the world because most of my social network would be like, “I’ve never heard her curse. I didn’t know.” Even on stage, I think I’ve said the F word like, one time.

Andrea Marie: But at home, in the privacy of your home, in front of your children. Uh huh.

Naomi Fitter: Yeah. Just for some reason. Although I’ve read some academic literature about like cursing and there’s some work that says, you know, it’s our alternative to hurting people. I’m like, actually, if this is the outlet, you know, okay.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Naomi Fitter: But it’s been funny to watch the kids like figure some things out that you don’t want them to.

Like, “Ooh, that’s a bad word. I dropped something. What should I say?” And like pronounce it wrong at first and then look at your face and iterate till they, they find the right pronunciation of the swear.

Andrea Marie: Oh man.

Naomi Fitter: Definitely some of those experience where at first I was on my high horse like, “I’ll be the perfect parent.

I’ll never do this.” And now I’m just right there in the trenches, which I mean, probably generally a good childhood experience for them. But again, the three-year-old, you know, yeah, quite the personality right now and it’s a lot to, to try to keep the day-to-day activities on the rails at the moment.

Andrea Marie: For sure. Yeah, so three, you grew up with three kids. That is a lot. That’s a lot of children. And you grew up in Ohio or?

Naomi Fitter: Ohio, yeah. In Ohio, that’s like the standard it seems. Yeah, myself and two siblings.

Andrea Marie: Oh, wow.

Yeah. Yeah. So are you gonna go… Well, I’m not gonna ask that question, ’cause I always hate when people ask… I mean, you know, it is none of anyone’s business what’s happening with how many children you have, so that’s always like such a, such… It’s so ridiculous too. One of the things that is hard is that you find yourself going for the stereotype, typical, stereotypical things even though you know, like not, you know not to do it.

Even when you’re talking to your kids, like I was like always like, “Because I said so.” You know, it’s like, “darn it.”

Naomi Fitter: I know. Yeah, yeah.

Andrea Marie: Why is that coming out of my mouth?”

Naomi Fitter: I try to answer all their why questions, but sometimes I just run out of energy. We’re very happy with the two, but you never know when there’s like a surprise or a even, you know.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Naomi Fitter: Catastrophe that brings the extra person into your house or something. But yeah.

Andrea Marie: Right. We can make plans and the plans don’t always happen.

Naomi Fitter: We have the only grandkids though, so we’re still winning at the…

Andrea Marie: Oh, wow. Were you the youngest or oldest, or where were you in the birth order?

Naomi Fitter: I’m the oldest, so there’s a chance there will be other grandkids, but that’s part of what brought my parents out to this coast. My sibling moved out to Seattle area and we have the grandkids, so.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Naomi Fitter: We’ll see, we’ll see. But at the moment we have enough. We don’t have to have more to like maintain their favor.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. That’s good.

Naomi Fitter: One of us is enough for even one. Yeah.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, and you don’t really wanna make that a competition. Like, you know, you’re not, that’s no where you’re pumping out more, that’s for sure.

Naomi Fitter: That’s the motivation, people out there.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, yeah.

Naomi Fitter: Hopefully not, yeah. Last resort is that you want a kid, I think.

Nerd comedy and physics jokes

Andrea Marie: Yeah. And so now in your comedy journey you are running some shows. Is that right? You’re doing, you’re running. Yeah, tell us a little bit about that and how that came to be.

Naomi Fitter: Yeah, I run a lot of nerd shows. So in my comedy I have sort of nerd comedy, I have mom comedy, I have some kind of general family dynamics comedy, which also happens to, you know, blend quite well with the mom comedy as, as you know best. So the nerd comedy especially I tend to tour around the country.

I have a show called Naughty But Nerdy, which is kind of my MO as a comedian I’ll be telling a joke about naked dads, but then it’ll have a punchline that’s physics themed, that kind of thing.

Andrea Marie: Physics themed

Naomi Fitter: That’s exciting. Yeah, there’s naked dad, you know. Is he naked? Is he not naked? It’s fun. So there you go.

Andrea Marie: Fun to weave a little physics into your set, you know?

Naomi Fitter: That’s what I like. That’s what I like. I can’t help it. I have like a rap joke about Fetty Wap where the punchline is a Doppler effect pun. I can’t help it. I’m a monster. I’m But hopefully, you know, people enjoy one side or the other or both. And with Naughty But Nerdy, we actually have a show coming up at Tacoma Comedy Club on Sunday. Fun this comes out, that’s July 26th.

Everybody rush the gates. It’s gonna be fun. Down in LA we’ve run some shows at The Crow and all over in other places too. But nerd comedy is kind of my other bigger stream. You already dominate the mom comedy field, so I’m happy to be on the podcast, happy to play with your folks sometimes.

And nerd comedy is the other big thing I’ve been kind of purveying to the comedy masses.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, and I mean, I really do believe that, like having some sort of theme where like people are like, “Oh, that’s for me ’cause I’m a nerd and I like to laugh.” You know, like, or whatever. Or even like, you know, just, yeah, just like who is this show for? Or who is gonna fit best with this, with this show is really helpful, and I think that’s a great way to run a show and get the right people, the right audience.

Naomi Fitter: Yeah, we’ve had, you know, 300-person audiences. We’ve had six-person audiences, but it’s always so great to have the right people who are gonna just enjoy, get a huge kick out of the material. So having that other brand is really fun.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Naomi Fitter: Look for it near you, I guess.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, this has been a ton of fun. Why don’t you tell people where they can find you? It is coming out after the show in Tacoma.

Naomi Fitter: You missed it. You missed out.

Andrea Marie: Sure, yeah, I’m sure it was amazing, and will be past and present. So tell people where they can find you so that they can connect and see, where your shows are coming out and all that.

Naomi Fitter: Yeah, sure. I’m naughtybutnerdy on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me by searching my name, just my full name, Naomi Fitter, in a lot of different places too, YouTube, Facebook, whatever is your flavor. There’s too much social media now.

Andrea Marie: I know.

Naomi Fitter: Take a look, keep an eye out, and I release a lot of reels and stuff too, so even if you’re enjoying comedy from home, there’s probably something for you there.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Yeah, so we’ll have those links in the show notes as well. Go check it out, and Naomi will be on some of our upcoming shows at Moms Unhinged this fall, so make sure you check those out, too. And Naomi, thank you so much and good luck with the three and five-year-old.

Naomi Fitter: I need luck. I need luck. Yeah, if anybody is like a three-year-old whisperer, I’ll give you my address.

Andrea Marie: I know. They are precocious little things. So yeah, thank you so much and bye everyone.

Naomi Fitter: Thanks. Bye.

Andrea Marie: Thanks for listening and make sure you subscribe, share, and follow us on the socials to get more comedy clips.