I keep telling people I have a dangerous job. However, Alaskan crab fishing and ice road trucking get all the hype about their high risk of death. Allow me to state my case.

Outside of comedy, I don’t know of any other occupation where the general public routinely pick fights with the workers, at best, or physically assault them, at worst. Except for maybe the evil demon-sphincters at tow lots. That, I get.

Even as a stand-up, I’ve had my share of incidents at shows: a death threat from a crazy woman; two street hookers and their angry pimp waiting to stab me after a show; a drunken sailor trying to kill me with an empty wine bottle.

By now, you have probably seen the video of a comedian in South Carolina fend off a violent heckler, who went on to throw a mic stand and a stool at him:

This was allowed to go on until the heckler was out of things to throw. Because protecting comedians is apparently very low priority on the Maybe-We-Should-Really-Do-Something-About-This list.

But one time, I actually had a fellow comedian threaten me about a joke I did onstage.

In this guy’s set, he tells a story of him shitting on his wife’s face on purpose. Look, I’m not here to criticize anybody’s art, just telling you that when life gives you turds… make turdade.

So I take the stage after him and say, “Funny guy. Beautiful wife. But her face smells funny.” The audience laughs at this callback and I move on to my part of the show. You know, the part where nobody talks about shitting on their wife’s face.

After the show, the other comic, the bard of bowel movements, the Shakespeare of Scheiße, has vanished. But the next night before the show, this snap case corners me backstage and has crazy, twitchy eyes. His fist and extended finger jabbing just centimeters away from my face, he says that I am “lucky” he’s in anger management or he would have dragged me off the stage.

For scale: he’s a former prison guard. And me? If this were Green Mile, he’d be Brutal to my Eduard Delacroix. (And yes, I know that’s Percy being roughed up by Brutal in the photo. But you try and find an image where Eduard is being menaced by Brutal. Go ahead, I challenge you.)

I tell him to get his hand out of my face, and that this is comedy. This is what we do. You tell people you shit on your wife’s face, and I say her face probably smells funny. He’s not having any of my logic, and he’s only getting angrier, which leads me to believe that this guy might actually shit on his wife’s face. Like, regularly. And he’s so guilty about his combination coprophilia/dacryphilia that he’s turned violent in his attempts to quash discussion of his knavery-derived glee.

Anyway, Green Mile went on to threaten my life to another comedian and also ran crying to the club management and telling them lies about what I said. (For the record, and to paraphrase, he claimed that I said I provided his wife with oral so messy in nature that I still had her downstairs aromas on my countenance. Seriously, even though the employees in the room heard what I actually said.)

And that, my friends, is why live comedy is the greatest form of entertainment. You get the laughs, but also you get the excitement of watching a circus show where there’s a chance some of the animal trainers might get attacked by the tigers. Or even by the other animal trainer who has severe issues.