Leanne Morgan: I’m Every Woman (2023)
In “I’m Every Woman,” Leanne Morgan delivers a stand-up performance that blends self-deprecating humor with relatable anecdotes, reflecting on her life as a 57-year-old woman. She jokes about the challenges of aging, weight gain during the COVID pandemic, and her struggle with diets, including a hilarious account of her family’s experimentation with Dexatrim. Morgan also shares amusing stories about her family, especially her husband’s quirks and their contrasting personalities, painting a picture of a long but loving marriage. Her tales extend to her children, highlighting the differences between them and her varying parenting styles. She touches on universal themes like the trials of motherhood, the peculiarities of aging, and the joys of grandparenting, all while maintaining a light-hearted and engaging tone that resonates with her audience. Morgan’s performance is a delightful mix of humor, honesty, and heart, making her relatable to a wide range of viewers.
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Ladies and gentlemen, my mom, Leanne Morgan!
[audience cheering]
[upbeat music playing]
[cheering continues] [mouthing] Thank you. [cheering continues] Thank y’all. I caught it. Thank y’all so much. Thank y’all so much for coming out to watch me. Lexington, Kentucky, thank y’all. [audience cheering] Thank y’all. If I could get out there, and straddle every one of y’all, and kiss y’all on the mouth, I would. [audience laughing] Okay. I’ve got on a girdle. [audience laughing] From here to here. And I can feel fat coming out of the back. [audience laughing] I want y’all to know that I was so cute in the ’80s. I really was, all right? I’m 57 years old and I… I’ve gained weight. And I’m really trying to do better. But that old, mean, stupid COVID. I wanna blame the mean, stupid COVID, and Vladimir Putin. [audience laughing and cheering] But I can’t. I can’t. It wasn’t all their fault. But the pandemic did do a number on me. You know, I really thought I could cope in a crisis effectively. And I don’t… [chuckling] I don’t think I can. I had big ideas about hiking, and jogging, and doing, and I didn’t. All right, do y’all remember when it first happened, and they said, “Give us two weeks. Give us two weeks.” Okay. I went, “Whoo! I’ll make a chicken pot pie.”
[audience laughing]
I made a chicken pot pie, and then that darn thing dragged on and on. And I made more chicken pot pie. And then I mixed alcohol with it. [audience laughing] And then I got on a big Jell-O kick. Well, I was taking care of my little mom and daddy. I couldn’t tour, so I would go and spend the night with my little mom and daddy who are 79 and 81. And I don’t know if y’all saw videos about me taking care of them during the… [audience cheering] Well, I want y’all to know, they’re doing great. They’re doing great. But I would go and stay with them, and they would have the thermostat on 82. And we watched, uh, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, and then we would go to bed at 6:00. And my little mama had to have soft foods there for a while, so that’s why I got on that Jell-O kick, even though my people, we make Jell-O salads for everything where I’m from. We do. We love it for a church supper. We love it to give it to somebody when they’re sick. We love it to give to somebody when they’re breastfeeding. [audience laughing] Because it’s refreshing. But I did not know how much sugar was in that Jell-O when I was sitting there eating it. And I sat there and ate all that with my little mama, and then all of the sudden, my stomach was laying on my legs. [audience laughing] Look at all these good-looking men. Lord. I did not know all of y’all were coming. I wouldn’t have been talking about my stomach on my legs. Look at y’all in these half-zip golf pullovers. Hello! That says “health insurance” to me. [audience laughing] All right, y’all make me think of my husband. Let me tell you about him.
Uh, ’cause he’s got a 401(k), and…
[audience laughing] Yeah! Okay, we met at the University of Tennessee. [scattered whooping] When I hear a man say “Go Vols,” I think, “Oh my Lord, did I make out with him in the ’80s?” [audience laughing] [laughing continues] I did horrible things in the ’80s. But my husband and I met, and I was so cute, and I was little. I had on little britches and my thyroid was functioning. And I felt good. And he was so enthralled with me, and so in love with me, and pursued me, and bought me presents, and vacuumed out my car, and did all kinds of things for me. And we celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary this year.
[audience cheering]
Thank y’all. Thank y’all. And, now, I truly believe he would not pull me out of a burning vehicle. [audience laughing] [laughing continues] All right, let me tell y’all about him. So, my husband is a very Type A, anal-retentive overachiever. And everything has had to be perfect all of his life. And he has made perfect grades, and he’s done everything perfect, and everything right. And he’s very competitive. He will rip your throat out. [audience laughing] We’ve tried to play cards socially with other couples, and I don’t listen and pay attention, and play a funky card, and then he cusses me.
And then…
[audience laughing] And I’m like, “I was just gonna drink a Diet Coke in fellowship.” “That’s what I’m doing.” He ran the Burger King when he was 15 years old in Morristown, Tennessee. They gave him a key. He played football on Friday night, and then would get up, and make biscuits starting at 4:00 in the morning at the Burger King. Honey, that’s how anal-retentive. And so then what did he do? He married me. [audience laughing] And I am an underachiever. And I haven’t done much right, and, um… But I’m fun. [audience cheering] He is very introverted, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I did not know how truly blank he was until all these children… three children grew up and walked off and left me with him. [audience laughing] He does not chat. He does not chat. And he’s got a big job. He’s got a big job, and he has to talk all day, and be in meetings, and on the phone. And, you know, men only have so many words they use in a day. That… That is science. My husband uses all his words up during the day at work, and then comes home at night and stares into space. And I need people. I need people. I just stand in the kitchen and talk to myself.
[audience laughing]
He works for a large manufactured housing company, the largest in the United States, and he’s worked for them for over 25 years. And he’s traveled with them Monday through Thursday or Tuesday through Friday. And that has worked for us. It really has. Me and these kids had a ball without him. [audience laughing] He’d come on the weekends, come home and really put a kink in things, but… [audience laughing] So, during this whole pandemic, he could not travel. I know. He had to make an office in our home. And he would come out every morning and give me this huge list of things that he thought I should be doing. [audience chuckling] Hard things! Hard things. Things like “paint the hallway” or something like that. I said, “Excuse me, but I stay in my gown until the third hour of The Today Show.” [audience laughing loudly]
I said, “You don’t know me, do you?”
[audience laughing] He would come in at lunchtime in the kitchen and not make eye contact with me. And come and stand next to me and grab one of my breasts. [audience laughing]
And hold it.
[audience laughing] [laughing continues] [laughing continues] And he’d say, “What’s for lunch?” [audience laughing] And I’d say, “Chicken salad?” [audience laughing] Now, I love him. I love him, I just don’t wanna be with him. [audience laughing] You know. No. He has been a wonderful provider. Wonderful provider. And he’s worked like a dog for us, and done without so that we could have. But all that money going out and taking care of a family all those years, that’s hard on a man. It’s hard on a man. It’s made him a real butthole. [audience laughing] I love him. Lord, I don’t want anything to happen. I don’t want him to run off with a mobile home woman. [audience laughing] I’ve got a good friend that has been through a divorce, and I’ve watched her go through this, and she’s really doing well. She’s doing great. She’s quit eating bread.
And…
[audience laughing] She’s doing sit-ups in the living room, and she looks like a movie star. And she wants a man. She’s ready to get out there and get another man. And it is on like Donkey Kong. [audience laughing] I’ve watched her go through this and I thought, “Oh my Lord, if I had to get out here and get a man at 57… after I’ve eaten all this Jell-O…” [audience laughing] Yes. It would take $1,000 just to groom… what all I’ve got going on. [audience laughing] I’ve got a toenail that doesn’t look right. We’ve got a girlfriend in our friend group, and she’s 58, and she loves her husband, loves him. But we were saying, “Lord, if we had to get out here and get a man.” She said, “Okay, I think I could show somebody my left breast.”
[audience laughing]
She said, “It still looks okay.” I thought, “Where is my friend gonna go on dates?” Where do people go on dates in their fifties and sixties? Lord. I have not dated since the ’80s. Honey, I was like… I want y’all to know that I can dance. I am coordinated and I’m athletic. I really am. I can bust a move. I’m not good at math. I can’t do math. But I can bust a move. But if I had to go to a club… This is how I’d dance now if I had to go to a club. ‘Cause I don’t want to jiggle. And I could see a man going, “What’s that?” And me going, “Nothing, that’s just a precancer.”
[audience laughing]
My friend is on dating apps, and she said everybody on the dating apps looks like they work at Buc-ee’s. [audience laughing] She said, “Everybody’s got a big cowboy hat on, and they’ve got their shirt unbuttoned down to their bellybutton.” But I thought, “What is she gonna do after a date?” Is she gonna go home with a man and make out around his CPAP machine? [audience laughing] Everybody I know is on a CPAP machine. I’ve wondered, “Should I get on a CPAP machine?” All right, you dolls, let me look at y’all. All right. Most of y’all probably are in my stage of life. [audience cheering] [cheering continues] Y’all take supplements. I bet we’re all on a good probiotic. I hope so. But then I look and I see some younger mamas in here. I see some younger girls. If you’ve got little children, can you clap for me or are you too tired?
[scattered clapping]
[audience laughing] Pretty tired. You sound pretty tired. Well, Lord, you’ve got a lot on you. And, um, you know you’re have to go home and do… nasty things to pay for these tickets. [audience laughing] I just wanna say thank y’all for coming out. Y’all probably don’t get to go anywhere most of the time. I know, my darling. I wish I could go home with y’all and put in a load of wash… and help y’all, but… When I see darling, young mamas like this, my heart goes out to them, because I remember it, but I don’t… Now, I’ve gotten far removed from it, but I remember how stressful it was. It was a wonderful time in my life to get to be with my little children, but it was stressful. And see, now, I’m not responsible for anybody. I lay up in the bed and watch Netflix. I can lay up in the bed and binge-watch Better Call Saul. You know? Nobody needs me. But I remember being young and my husband was always traveling, making a living for us. And I would be at home, and there would be a crisis happen, like a raccoon would get caught in a trash can. You know? Something… And I’d have to take care of it on my own, and I’m not good at stuff like that. I’m sissy.
I don’t even know how to mow.
[audience laughing] But I also remember, especially my boy, so smart and sweet but forgetful, and he would say to me almost every week, “Oh, I’ve got a project due.” I go, “When?” “In the morning.” [audience laughing] It’d be nine o’clock at night, I’d go, “Oh my Lord.” He’d go, “It’s not bad. It’s not bad.” “I’ve just gotta build a replica…” [audience laughing] “…of an early 1900s tenement house…” [audience laughing] “…in Brooklyn, New York.” [mouthing] “I just need 300 popsicle sticks and a… and a can of brown paint.” And I’d have to get in the car with no bra on, with three little children, and go to Walmart in the middle of the night. But I want y’all to know what your future is gonna be.
And I…
[audience laughing] Not in a bad way, I’m just trying to be informative. Don’t eat white flour and sugar. Okay, that’s one thing. But I wish somebody told me what I was gonna… what was headed in my way. I think I could’ve dealt with it better. Okay, there’s a thing that’s gonna happen to y’all in your late thirties, early forties. It can start then. And it comes in the middle of the night like a ghost. And it’s called perimenopause. And nobody talks about it. And they should because it lasts ten years. And these boys that are my age, they’ve already been through this. Honey, they’ve laid in the bed next to a woman and thought, “Is that steam coming off of her?”
[audience laughing]
“Why is she crying because Tanya didn’t invite her to the Weight Watchers meeting?” Her hormones are just like this. Y’all’s hormones will be similar to a middle school girl. Do you remember that horror? Okay, that’s perimenopause. You’ll know you’re in it when all of the sudden, you’ll start sweating here and here at night, and you’ll wake up, and your hair will look like chicken fuzz. And there’s nothing you can do about it. I have to do all this stuff to my hair now. I didn’t do a thing to my hair for 25 years. I didn’t do anything. The only time I’ve spent this much time on my hair was the ’80s.
[audience laughing]
I’m from a town of 500 people in Middle Tennessee, outside of Nashville, on the Kentucky-Tennesse border. It’s a farming community where we grow dark-fired tobacco, and my people are farmers on both sides, generations back. And I went to this precious little school that was kindergarten through twelve, 650 students. I graduated with 42 people, and they were all darling and my best friends. And the big percentage of them were gonna get married right out of high school and start farming, and I wanted to too. I had a high school boyfriend, and I loved him. And he was from farming people and went to the big-city high school. And, uh, I look back on it, and… He was tiny. Cute. So cute, but I could’ve held him like a baby.
[audience laughing]
I look at me now and I think, “You know, as I age, surely to goodness I’m gonna get smaller.” My feet are getting bigger, my hands are getting bigger.
[mumbling] I just walk around like that.
[audience laughing] I take pictures with people and they’re, like, right up under here. But I thought that I was gonna marry that boy, and I thought we were gonna farm, we’re gonna grow dark-fired tobacco. And I’m gonna can our food, and we’re gonna have six kids, and we’re gonna let ’em play up in a car on blocks.
[audience laughing]
[laughs] Yeah. Ugh. So stupid I was. And my parents were like, “No, you are going, uh, to college or in the military.” I was like, “Oh, shit.” [audience laughing] “I cannot make it in the military. Lord.” “I can’t even mow.” But, anyway, I know this is a long way to talk about perimenopause. Just hold on with me. All right, so, we… Me and my high school boyfriend would get out in his ’79 Monte Carlo that was as long as this stage. And we would make out, and then I would go home to my precious mama, Lucille, and say, “Mama, I must’ve burned my neck.” [audience laughing] “I must’ve burned my neck on a curling iron.” [laughing continues] And she knew that was crazy, but anyway, she never made me feel shame, but then… All right, do y’all remember being in high school, and just hormones running through you, and you’re like, “I wanna…” “I wanna make out in a car”? [audience laughing] I remember. I wish I felt that way now. I wish I felt that way now. I could get a new purse out of that. [audience laughing wildly] If I said to my husband, “Chuck… suck my neck.” [audience laughing] “Suck my neck, Chuck.” [laughing continues] “As hard as you can.” [laughing continues] “Until you put a bruise on me.” If I said that to him, I think he would have a heart attack. But he’d do it.
[audience laughing]
He would do it. But that’s when you’ve got all those hormones going in your teens and twenties. And then you start having babies, and you’re breastfeeding, and then everything starts getting wonky, and then you go through perimenopause, and then menopause. That’s what I’m in. I’m probably now on the other side of it. But that’s when I had no estrogen, no progesterone, and no testosterone. And that makes you real bitter and angry. [audience laughing] My husband’s testosterone dipped a little. Praise God. [laughing continues] Lord. Okay. So, you young girls, if I could give y’all any advice, and I know you haven’t asked me for it, you need to have that date night every week with your husband while your children are little and nurture that relationship with your husband, because one day these kids are gonna be gone, and you’re gonna look at him, and go, “Who are you?” He’s gonna say, “Who are you, and what do you want from me? And me and my husband… I’m really trying to build that intimacy back with their daddy. But his idea of intimacy is different from mine.
[audience laughing]
His idea of intimacy is something nasty. [laughing continues] And that’s okay. That’s the way God made him. That’s okay. My idea of intimacy is, “I wanna talk.” You know? “I wanna talk something to death.” He’ll go, “What do you wanna talk about?” I go, “I don’t know, but there’s somethin’ goin’ on with my bladder.” [audience laughing] So now it’s just me and him. This is what we talk about all the time, the thermostat. And I’ll just be honest, we fight. We fight about it. Well, I say that. I’ve beat him down. I’ve beat him down. But I wanna keep it on 68 because I wanna live through the night. He wants to put it back up into the 70s. And I know he’s cold, and I feel terrible over it. I know he’s cold. And I have that on 68, I have a fan coming this way, and I have a fan coming that way. And he’s just… His hair’s just blowing in the wind.
[audience laughing]
And sometimes he wears a half-zip golf pullover to bed. [laughing continues] But another reason why he does not want to run that thermostat is because he’s tight with money. He does not wanna spend money. He’ll say, “We don’t need to be blowin’ that thing all night.” My husband is one of the tightest people I’ve ever known in my life. And I mean that. His parents said to me before we got married, “You watch him.” “He’s like a squirrel, he’ll bury it in the yard.”
[audience laughing]
And thank God for him. Thank God for him, because if it were up to me, we’d be living in a hole. It’d be a fun hole. [audience laughing] But he has saved, saved, saved, saved, saved, and I have pissed, pissed, pissed, pissed, pissed… [laughing continues] …money away. I haven’t done anything crazy. I know people who’ve done a crazy mess. I don’t anything crazy. But I have bought a lot of pumpkin towels at T.J. Maxx. [audience laughing] I have. And he’s always told me, all of our married life, “This is it, we’re gonna lose everything.” “We’re about to lose everything. It’s gonna be a bad mobile home month.” And that wasn’t true. And I said to him lately, “Why’d you say that to me?” And he said, “I didn’t want you to do anything crazy.” I go, “What was I gonna do, buy all the pink Himalayan salt at T.J. Maxx?” He does not believe in joy.
[audience laughing]
[sighs] He believes in suffering. He’s got a thing about his family having nice cars. He doesn’t believe that any of us should have a nice vehicle. He thinks we should all drive old, beat-down vehicles until they fall apart in the interstate. It gives him joy to come have to pick us up at the interstate. My kids drive old, old cars. I finally put my foot down. I was driving a 2009 white Honda Pilot, and they are wonderful cars, but if you… if you don’t know what that model looks like, it looks like I was delivering Lay’s potato chips.
[audience laughing]
I never felt pretty in it. [laughing continues] It had over 239,000 miles on it, and lights started flashing in it saying, “Get out, Leanne.” “Get out.” He drives a 2007 Tahoe and the “T” and the “A” are missing. [audience laughing] But I feel bad because I wear these old gowns to bed that are loose because I got all those fans going and I’m hot. And so I’m wearing these old gowns, but I’ve held on to two little gowns. Cotton gowns, no big deal, got ’em at Target, no big deal. But every time I put one of those on, my husband’s like… [audience laughing loudly] You never know what’s gonna trigger him. [laughing continues] I have a good friend that said to me, she said, “I’ve got a gas fireplace in my master bedroom and I love that thing.” But every time I turn it on, Sam thinks we’re gonna do it. [audience laughing] She said, “I can’t even enjoy my own fireplace.” [laughing continues] All right, I know you boys have been waiting for me to talk about my panties. [audience laughing] I know. Calm down. You know, I named this “The Big Panty Tour.” I’ve done a hundred cities. This is winding it down.
[audience cheering]
Thank you. Thank y’all. Thank y’all. And people ask me all the time, “Why’d you name this The Big Panty Tour?” And I tell people, “I like big panties.” Big panties say to me, “Freedom!” [audience laughing] “Comfort.” I was wearing these tiny panties for years, and they were cuttin’ me in two. [laughing continues] I thought, “Who are these for, little children?” I love… Boys, are y’all watching? I love a high-cut brief. [audience laughing] I love a high-cut brief, and I like it to come over my stomach. [audience cheering] Thank you. [cheering continues] Thank you. Thank you, and the kind that I wear are called Vanity Fair Lingerie, Beyond Comfort. Beyond Comfort. And they are soft and luxurious, and they don’t ride up. They stay out of my crack. [audience laughing] I don’t want anything in my crack. I know. Love them. Okay. But I want you boys to know that I’ve held on to some tiny, little, hateful panties. I’ve kept them in a drawer, and I get those out every once in a while… in case some bills need to get paid, you know what I’m sayin’?
[audience laughing]
Yeah. That’s biblical. Let me tell y’all that my husband gives me wonderful gifts. Wonderful gifts. And I talk about how tight he is. And he is. My light features look like Game of Thrones. But he’s a wonderful gift-giver. He has given me beautiful gifts for years, and I’ve given him lame gifts. Lame gifts like a pair of khakis. And I had heard him all of our married life say, “I wish I could learn how to fly a plane.” But he would never spend that money on himself because he’d put me and these children first, and wanted everybody to get through school, and all that. So I got him the first few lessons, flight lessons to see if he even liked it. Well, he did, and now he’s about to get his pilot’s license. [audience cheering] I know! I know. He’s so smart. But let me tell you, I didn’t think that through. ‘Cause he said not long ago, “I’ll just start flying you everywhere.” And I thought, “Oh my Lord, he’s gonna buy an old, rickety little plane.”
[audience laughing]
And he believes in everybody working like a mule, 24 hours a day. Can’t relax. Everybody’s gotta work. So I could see him… All right, say he flew me home tomorrow from Lexington. And I’ve, you know, done five shows this weekend. I’ve got on a big girdle, and I’ve given it everything I had. And I’ll be tired in the morning. And I could hear him saying, “Okay.” “I know you’re tired, but we’re gonna crop dust on the way home.” [audience laughing] “I’m gonna need you to just lean out of this plane and throw some poison out.” [laughing continues] He did buy himself a used motorcycle, and he wanted to start riding motorcycles. And he did buy that for himself. And my little daddy, all of my life, has been scared to death something would happen to me or my sister. And he was like, “Don’t you dare get on a motorcycle.” That was one of the things. It would just scare me to death. I was like, “I’m not going to.” Well, my husband buys one, and says… Because we’re 30 minutes from the Smoky Mountains, “Let’s go ride in the mountains.” And I thought, “Oh my Lord.” “If I get on this thing, he’s gonna pull off into the bushes, and make me do something horrible.”
[audience laughing wildly]
And I can’t be scared and do it. All right, well, let me tell y’all. Let me get back to what it’s like, us going to bed. Okay. Young girls, when y’all get through this… When you start going through these hormonal changes, it’ll disrupt your sleep. Not everybody, but the majority of people, it will. And it did me. I haven’t slept in years. And I said to my nurse practitioner, “I can’t sleep.” And she said, “Do you want some Ambien?” And I was like, “I would love some Ambien, but will I get hooked on dope?” [audience laughing] Marijuana is not legal here in Kentucky, right? It’s not in Tennessee either. Okay. I don’t mean to scare y’all, but I travel all over the United States. And let me tell you something, everybody… everybody is high on marijuana. Everybody! Everywhere I go, I walk down the street, walk in the elevator… I didn’t know what was happening for a long time. And I thought, “Who’s boiling all this cabbage?” [audience laughing wildly] But my nurse practitioner got my compound pharmacist to make me a natural supplement pill that I keep by the bed. And it’s okay. It’s melatonin, L-theanine, GABA, passion flower, that kind of stuff. And I keep it by the bed in a pill bottle. And my husband is still tickled with me, if you know what I mean. And he comes into our bedroom, about every night, flaring his nostrils at me.
[audience laughing]
And I know what that means, and… I wish he’d speak to me. [laughing continues] That’d be fun. But he comes in, and flares his nostrils at me, and I say to him, “Okay, okay.” “Yes, we can do it.” Um… “But just know that if you hear that pill bottle shake, that means I’ve taken a pill.” “And that means that you’ve got less than 20 minutes.” [audience laughing] “And then my eyes are gonna roll back in my head.” “And then I’m gonna need you to leave me alone at that point.” And he gets hyper-focused on his phone, looking at sports or something. And then I’m over here with two beagles in the bed, in a gown, and praying to the dear Lord, “Please let me sleep through the night, Lord, please.” “Please let me sleep through the night.” And I drift off to sleep. And then my husband remembers me.
[audience laughing]
And I’m over here, dead to the world, and he reaches over, and grabs one of my breasts. [laughing continues] And it puts me into a blind rage.
[audience clapping]
All right, let me tell y’all about these precious children that I got to have. I got to have three, and I begged their daddy for a fourth baby. And he was so worried about making a living for all of us. He was like, “We can’t afford that, we don’t need to do it.” And probably about ten years after that, so I was probably about 48, 49 years old, he said, “You know, I was wrong.” “We’re never gonna have enough money. What difference does it make?” “Do you wanna have another baby?” And I said, “I’ve got plantar fasciitis.”
[audience laughing]
I’d leave a baby at Target by accident. But I got to have three. And my boy is my oldest, he’s 29, then I’ve got two girls. All right, my boy is… You know, we’re right next to the Smoky Mountains, so he’s grown up hiking, kayaking, fly-fishing, doing all that outdoorsy stuff, and he loves it. So when it was time for him to pick a college, he chose Berry College in Rome, Georgia, B-E-R-R-Y. What they’re known for, it’s the largest campus in the world. It’s 26,000 acres of reserve. There, you have mountain bike trails, all the stuff he loves. Rock climbing, all this stuff. There’s only 2,000 students there. So there are more deer than there are children. And they have these entrepreneurships. And everybody there has a job, has to work, but my boy started the cage-free egg enterprise and raised 200 chickens while he was in college, and sold the eggs to the local restaurants and cafeteria. And it’s still going to this day. [audience cheering and applauding] I know. Is that not darling? Yummy. Do y’all wanna know what I was doing at the University of Tennessee in 1983?
[audience laughing]
I was not raising chickens, honey. [laughing continues] I was doing horrible things. Horrible things. I was making horrible decisions. Horrible. I was dating people you wouldn’t wipe your feet on. [audience laughing] But I’m okay now. I’ve been washed in the blood, and I’ve been forgiven.
[audience cheering and clapping]
Thank you. My boy had a roommate all through college that was an outdoorsy little feller, and he had been in a gospel quartet in high school. And this little kid, his mama and daddy raised cattle, so this child knew all about cattle. So Berry College put this child in charge of hundreds of heads of cattle. You boys that are my age, do y’all remember that poster everybody had in their bedroom? All the boys had it in their dorm room. And it was that poster of Farrah Fawcett in that red bathing suit. Yes, with her nipple. [audience chuckling] Beautiful. I go to visit my boy and his roommate, and they’ve got posters of Jersey cows on the wall. [audience laughing] They had been out fishing or doing something and had found a little baby beaver that had been… her mom had been killed, or she had been abandoned, somethin’. They bring her back to the dorm room. I go to visit that weekend. I walk in, and my boy is holding a little baby beaver in the palm of his hand, feeding her a kitten bottle. And I said, “How do you even know what to feed her?” He said, “I’ve called the beaver hotline.” [audience laughing] [laughing continues] They named her Bathsheba. From the Bible. And all these boys in this dorm floor took care of Bathsheba when other people had to go to class, and they all loved her. And then some kid with some sense walked in one day and said, “I think this is illegal.”
[audience laughing]
“We’re not even supposed to have a dog in here, much less a wild beaver.” And my boy said, “I cannot give her up. I love her.” And his roommate said, “Charlie, she’s gonna grow up and eat your kitchen table.” [audience laughing] So they found a woman in Atlanta that takes care of wild animals on the down-low, and they transported a beaver in the middle of the night. And that woman took care of Bathsheba until Bathsheba got big enough to kill that little woman. [audience laughing] My boy met his wife his freshman year in class, and came home to me and said, “I’ve met the love of my life.” “She’s my best friend.” “This is who I’m gonna marry.” And I was like, “Who is this heifer?” [audience laughing] And I love my little daughter-in-law, and she’s like another child to me. She really is, but, Lord… Okay, you younger girls, if y’all got sons, I’m not trying to scare you, but they will grow up and you will have to hand him over to somebody else. And it is a booger. And I love her, but two weeks before they got married, I took to the bed. [audience laughing] I took to the bed and bawled my eyes out, and he came to me and said, “You need to get a hold of yourself.” They had a beautiful big wedding, and that morning I got my hair and makeup professionally done. You would never know it. Every picture, I’m going…
[audience laughing]
[mouthing] But everything turned out beautiful, and let me tell you what wonderful thing comes out of that. They have had my first grandbaby. [audience cheering] Thank y’all. We are having a ball. That yummy baby is two years old now, and he is precious. And people would say to me, “It’s the best thing that happens to you.” And I feel like I received that, but you don’t know until you have ’em. Oh my gosh, if we are not having a ball. I hope I’m his best friend. He’s my best friend. And every time I see him, I say, “I’m buying you a camper.” [audience laughing] And then my husband says, “Oh, yeah, Leanne, just throw money.” “Just throw money.” [audience laughing] “You don’t need a camper. You don’t know how to camp.” [whining] “You need to rent a camper to see if you like camping.” [audience laughing] Y’all should see how beautiful and stout this baby is. I’m a big woman, my husband is 6’4″, we breed big kids. This baby eats chicken and steak by the fistfuls. And we just go, “Hercules, Hercules, Hercules!” Y’all should see him in the yard with no shirt on, mowing with a bubble mower.
[audience laughing]
Oh my Lord. Beautiful. I was in an Uber with a man up north, and this man… We were talking about our grandchildren, and he’s got a grandson, and he’s in love with him, and he said, “I love him so much that if he came to me and said, ‘Granddaddy, I’ve killed somebody, I’m gonna need some help.'” He said, “I’d do it.” [audience laughing] And the first thing I thought was, “I’m in an Uber with a man who would cover up a murder.” [laughing continues] And then the second thing I thought was, “I’d help my baby cover up a murder.”
[audience laughing]
When my boy and his wife found out about this precious baby, they would say, “Their baby.” And we would say, “Our baby.” And then they started using words like “boundaries.” [audience laughing] They’d start saying things like, “Oh, yeah, so-and-so needs to place some boundaries with her mother and father-in-law.” And I just smiled, and kept my mouth shut, and went… And I thought to myself, “They don’t know what’s about to hit them.” [audience laughing] They’re gonna have this precious baby, and they’re gonna be up all night. And that’s gonna go into weeks and months. And then my little daughter-in-law’s gonna start hallucinating. And then she’s gonna wake up in the night and she’ll be breastfeeding a lamp. [audience laughing] And we’ll see who’s got boundaries. [laughing continues] [audience applauding] Thank you.
[audience cheering]
Thank you. Thank y’all. Well, I was right. I was right. I’m the mama, I know everything. So, they work full time, both of them, and my daughter-in-law has been going to MBA school at night and on the weekends. So they are so tired and crazy, they don’t even know their own name. They don’t even call us anymore. They just let that little baby off in the yard. [audience laughing] We get him any time we want him.
[audience clapping]
Thank y’all. And we want him all the time. My husband, I said to him the other day, “Do you wish we could raise him?” And he said, “I am gonna raise him.” [audience laughing] Do you girls that are my age, do y’all remember that book What to Expect When You’re Expecting? Yeah, that was a hateful book. [audience laughing] It said things like, “You’re gonna have a hemorrhoid in the seventh month, on the fourth day at two o’clock in the afternoon.” And I’d be like, “That’s crazy.” [audience laughing] Back then, everybody was worried to death about a food allergy. And I wanted everything to be perfect with my first baby. And I had charts hanging in my kitchen. And I made sure that I didn’t give him squash until I cleared sweet potatoes. And I was so anal-retentive about it. And I did well with my second baby, did well with her, but that third baby… We were at McDonald’s.
And…
[audience laughing] She was sitting in a high chair. I remember it like it was yesterday. And she didn’t have teeth yet, and I took a cheeseburger, and flung it onto her high chair.
And she gummed it down.
[audience laughing] And my other two were playing in the balls and the tube. And I remember a woman coming over intercom, and she said, “Ma’am, your baby has pooped in the tube.” [audience laughing] So I had to crawl up in that tube, get my baby, pull my baby down. Mine loved the balls. I don’t even know if they have balls anymore, because of all the disease going around. Mine loved the balls. Mine would be playing in the balls, having a big time. And then a dirty diaper would go floating across. [audience laughing] They’d find a chicken nugget that wasn’t theirs and go… [laughing continues] They were horrible. Okay, my middle child is my oldest daughter. And you may have seen a video about me talking about how hateful she was when she was a teenager.
[audience member whoops]
Thank you.
Well, I’m not taking that back.
[audience laughing] We were scared to death of her. If you’ve got a teenage girl and you’re going through that, let me give you this hope, they’re gonna come out of that. It’s gonna take a long time, but they’re gonna come out of that, and then they come back around, and end up your very best friend. I know! Girls. Yummy. Okay, she takes care of me just like I’m her baby now. She calls and checks on me, calls me three or four times a day. “Mom, did you get where you’re going? Are you in Des Moines?” “Are you all right?” I go, “Yeah, baby, thank you. Tell your daddy.” [audience laughing] She decided to go to the University of Tennessee. And it’s only 20 minutes down the road from us, but we never saw her because she was very involved on campus. And she was in a sorority, and she lived at the sorority house, was on their executive board. And let me brag on her a little bit and tell y’all that she was on the homecoming court of that big SEC school. And she looked like a movie star.
[audience cheering]
Thank you. Thank y’all. And I’m telling y’all that because I live through her. [audience laughing] Nobody ever asked me to be on the homecoming court because I was smoking cigarettes behind the dumpster. [laughing continues] She has a heart for children going through severe illness, so she went to work for Make-A-Wish right out of college, and then now she raises money in Knoxville for East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, and is in development with them.
[audience clapping]
Thank you. Thank you. And being in non-profit, she doesn’t care a thing in the world about material things or money, she really doesn’t. And she had a big birthday, and I said, “This is a big one.” “Let’s get you something really good. What do you want?” And she said, “Well, I could use some new prescription glasses.” [audience laughing] I said, “Oh, fun.” “We’ll get you those, and how about we get you a flu shot to go with it?” [audience laughing] My baby child is 24, my youngest daughter, and she’s a professional makeup artist. Some of y’all may have seen her do videos on me during the pandemic.
[audience clapping]
Thank you. Well, she loves money. She loves money. And very bougie. So if you saw her do videos on me, just know I had to Venmo her right after it was over. [audience laughing] But, no, she’s been a joy and a doll. I had my children all real close together. My girls are 20 months apart. And so when I had her, it was a blur. And I gotta tell you, I was beat down. And I did not know my own name. I did the best I could with what I had at the time. I really tried, did the best I could. But I let her do whatever she wanted to. I did. She’s turned out good for all that. Okay, are there any teachers in here? [scattered clapping] Okay, we didn’t hear them clap big ’cause they raised her hand.
[audience laughing]
Sweet. I don’t know how y’all do it. God did not call me to do it. If I was a teacher, I’d be running out this highway
with my bra on the outside of my clothes.
[audience laughing] My teachers for my children were wonderful and helped me so much. And they liked me, and I loved them, and they invited me on every field trip. They did. I got to go on every field trip with three children. And y’all know why they invited me? Because I’m fun. And I’m not a butthole. [audience laughing] So if you’re not getting invited on the field trips… [laughing continues] …you may wanna look inward. [laughing continues] But I want y’all to know that with those first two, I was on top of my game. I really was. I was helping in the classroom, and I was bringing muffins, and I was all up in there. At then at night, I would be doing flashcards, and I’d be drilling those first two. “You’re gonna make 100 on this spelling test and I mean it!” And they were scared to death. That third baby… I remember asking one of her teachers, “Can she read?”
[audience laughing]
We went to meet her first-grade teacher. And I, we… I had a minivan, and I know… I know we got there. I know they had clothes on. When they were little bitty, it was just like a swarm of bees, and I don’t even know how we got anywhere, I was so crazy. And we went to meet this first-grade teacher, and I just didn’t pay attention to what was goin’ on. And we walk in there, and this first-grade teacher has no makeup on and Birkenstocks. And I look down, and my baby child, six years old, has got on full contour makeup. Lee Press-On Nails, they’re this long, and she’s going… [audience laughing] And I thought, “Oh, shit.” [laughing continues] My husband is very, very smart in math, and has an undergraduate and then a master’s in some kind of math something. I don’t know. Our first date, he said, “I love a derivative,” and I remember thinking, “Okay.”
[audience laughing]
“Why? Okay.” But he bred with me and has three children that cannot do math. All of them took after me.
But they’re fun. They’re fun.
[audience laughing] And they’re not buttholes, you know?
[audience clapping]
I know, thank you. So when my baby child was in third grade, they started that old, mean long division, and she hated it. During long division, she’d go up to her teacher and go, “Phew.” “I got a sick headache.” “I’m gonna need an ibuprofen.” And her teacher would send her to the nurse’s office, which really wasn’t a nurse. That was my friend Susie that was volunteering. And Susie would give her a Diet Coke and a chocolate chip cookie, and they would sit with their legs crossed, and gossip about people. [audience laughing] I was very strict with those first two about language. I said, “Nobody is gonna call anybody ‘stupid’ or ‘butt.'” “If you call somebody ‘stupid’ or ‘butt, ‘ you’re gonna be in deep doo-doo, and I mean it.” And they were scared to death. They would have never. That third baby, she started out with some spell-cussing. Little bitty, walk in a room, and go, “What the H?”
[audience laughing]
She’s always called her daddy “Chuck.” She’d go, “Chuck, you a-hole.” [audience laughing] And my husband is old-school. He doesn’t take crap off of anybody, and he’d go… [audience laughing] “She’s a nut.” And the oldest two would go, “What?” “She just called Dad an a-hole!” She was little bitty, walk into somebody’s birthday party and go, “What’s up, mofos?” [audience laughing] [exclaims] Terrible. I had that thing about words and bad language, because I think my little mama and daddy never said ugly words, ever. And there was never alcohol in our house until my sister was gonna marry a little later in life, and she was gonna marry this hoopty-doo man. And when I say “hoopty-doo,” I mean country club. Some country club people like to drink. So we all, to get her married off, started drinking. [audience laughing] And my little mama, had never had alcohol, got out of my car. She had two and a half glasses of wine, and said, “I can’t feel my arms.”
[audience laughing loudly]
Okay. All right. Let me tell you this last thing. So my husband does work for that big mobile home company, and he has worked for them for over 25 years, and it’s been a blessing to our family. But one of the perks there that they give us is they send us on these trips, unbelievable trips all over the world. And I’ve loved them, and it’s been wonderful, but a little stressful at the same time. Because most of the time it’s somewhere tropical, um, and that’s in late January, early February. But sometimes it’ll be like Alaska, somewhere like that. Sometimes it’s been overseas. But say, for instance, Alaska. And they all… We sign up for excursions before we go. And, uh, let me tell you, I don’t mind an excursion. I wanna go and kiss a husky puppy in the mouth. [audience laughing] I’ll do that. But, oh, no, everybody that goes signs up for these scary, scary excursions. One time we went to Alaska, and my husband signed us up to go on a float plane to see a glacier. And we walk up to this dock, and there was this little float plane floating in the water. And they line us up on this dock, and this little crusty man with a pack of Marlboro Reds comes up to me and says,
“What do you weigh?”
[audience laughing] And I lied.
I lied.
[laughing continues] And I watched nine more people… He has nine more people, and I watch them all lie. And I thought, “Oh my Lord.” “We’re gonna go down.” We all get in this tiny little float plane, and they put these big old headphones on us. And somebody’s narrating, I think it’s Wink Martindale. [audience laughing] And all the sudden, this little man starts pumping his foot. Pumping his foot, that’s how we get in the air. He’s pumping that plane. [audience laughing] I don’t know if I saw a glacier, I don’t know if I saw one. One, because it was all white everywhere, but also, I was praying. I was praying. And I took my purse handles, and took ’em around my neck, and put that purse on in case somebody needed to identify my body.
[audience laughing]
There was another time that we went to Alaska, and my husband signed us up for the largest zip line in North America. And we got on a rickety school bus with a high school boy driving that was high on marijuana. And he drove us up to the top of that mountain. And we all got out, and he said, “Okay, listen, there’s a couple of grizzlies that live up here.” “If they pop up out of that rock, just run.”
[audience laughing]
All right, let me tell y’all that being from Adams, Tennessee, we went on vacations. But my mom and dad had a farm, they still have their farm, and they raised me and my sister, put us through school. They had a meat processing plant, and they did everybody’s meat in Middle Tennessee and Kentucky. So they worked like Trojans. So we went on vacations, but it was… You know, we couldn’t go far most of the time. We’d go to Florida every once in a while. Most of the time, we’d go to Gatlinburg, ’cause my little daddy loves Gatlinburg, and he still loves it. And… I try to take him when I can. And this is the one memory they have of me growing up, and they bring it up every Thanksgiving and Christmas. And they say, “Remember when we were in Gatlinburg, and Leanne was 18 months old, and ate that cigarette butt off the ground?”
[audience laughing]
And I think, “Is that the only thing y’all remember about me?” So I had never been on these kind of trips that I’m talking about, so… Most of the time, these trips are somewhere tropical, and that’s all wonderful. And I don’t mean to sound that I’m not grateful for it, but… that means that I’ve gotta go and try on a bathing suit in the dead of winter before the end of January, early February, and I’d rather take a bullet.
[audience laughing]
And I’m sure there are some girls here tonight that love to try on a bathing suit in the dead of winter, but us East Tennessee girls like to eat pork sausage. [audience laughing] And I’ve been prepping for this trip for 25 years, and I think every year, “I’m gonna do better.” “I’m gonna do better. I’m gonna tone. I’m gonna do better.” “And I’m gonna…” “I don’t have to buy a Miraclesuit this year.” “I won’t have to buy a one-piece bathing suit with a girdle in it.” “No.” And don’t ever buy a lavender one.
Okay.
[audience laughing] I can’t even think about going on one of these trips until I can get through Christmas. And I don’t mean to sound like everything falls on me, but everything falls on me. I love my family, but they don’t do anything to help me. I do all the decorating, the cooking, the cleaning, the wrapping, the shopping, all that. Last year on December 24th, my husband said to me, “Can I help you do anything?” [audience laughing] And I said, “I’m gonna beat you to death.” And I can’t think about this trip, ’cause I gotta get ready for Christmas. And I get so torn up that I wanna take to the bed. I wanna take to the bed, but I can’t take to the bed, ’cause if I take to the bed, nobody’s gonna have Christmas. And in my twisted mind, I think, “Oh, I can lose 40 pounds in four weeks.” [audience laughing] “Yeah, I’ll be all right.” “I can just do Weight Watchers again.” Because that’s been so successful for me. I’ve done every diet in the world. My mama, and my sister, and I took Dexatrim. When I was 17 years old… I’m the youngest. You could buy it everywhere. Do y’all remember Dexatrim?
[audience agreeing]
Yeah. It was speed. [audience laughing] We took speed as a family. [audience clapping] We would take Dexatrim, and our heads would itch, and we’d fight in the yard. [audience laughing] We did. [laughs] So, one day… One day, I was looking through my VHS tapes, and I pop this VHS tape into this old VHS tape player that’s in my children’s playroom. And I thought, “Who are those people?” [audience laughing] This was a VHS tape of me and my husband on one of these trips doing a snorkeling excursion in Maui. And we had moved to San Antonio. My husband had gotten a big promotion to be over South Texas, and he gives 150% at everything he does. So he was torn up over that, and trying to do the best he could. And I’d moved these little children from Tennessee to Texas, and I was torn up. And that was the first time I got the shingles. And instead of coping effectively, and getting out and jogging, we ate tortillas.
[audience laughing]
I pop this VHS tape in. I thought, “Who are these people?” [laughing continues] It was me and my husband. I did not recognize us. We were so bloated and pale from eating tortillas. Our heads were this big. You could not fit ’em in a bushel basket. All right, so this whole VHS tape… And I’ll release it someday, ’cause let me tell you, everybody on that boat was from my husband’s company, except this honeymoon couple down here on the right, down right at the bottom, and they were practically fornicating. [audience laughing] So I’ll release it so y’all can watch. Okay? We get on this boat, and I remember it like it was yesterday. The first person that came to us was this stunning woman. I’ve never seen somebody as pretty in a bikini in my life. Beautiful, tan, blond. She goes, “I’m gonna film all day.” “Do y’all want me to film y’all on the boat and in the water?” “And it’s this amount of money.” And it was a lot. It was very expensive. And I went, “Yes!”
And…
[audience laughing] And my husband was like… handing her a credit card. And we got on this boat, and I don’t… You know, people were already partying, and I don’t like all that kind of stuff. And I don’t like to go out in the middle of the ocean. I was freaked out. And so I remember I had one of those patches on that keeps you from vomiting but it gives you double vision at the same time. [audience laughing] And everybody’s on that boat, having a big time. And somebody’s cooking Chinese food, and somebody’s serving alcohol, and everybody’s having a big time. And there’s a man that teaches you how to snorkel on the way out there in ten minutes. And he gives us all this snorkeling equipment. And I’ve got, you know, all this on. He puts a big, old floater thing on me with a strap, and throws me into the ocean. And I feel something. “Is that an eel?” [audience laughing] “Is that an eel?” And then my husband floats up to me. He’s got on a big pair of goggles and a big thing in his mouth. Takes that thing out, and looks at me, and says, “You want to do it?”
[audience laughing loudly]
[audience applauding]
And I said, “Get away from me!” And through this whole VHS tape… But I remember it like it was yesterday. He is twirling. And diving. Twirling, diving, and doing all this. And the first thing I thought… My heart dropped when I thought, “Is he showing off in front of this woman in the bikini?” “Is he having unbiblical thoughts about her?” Then I took a beat and I thought, “No, that’s not who he is. That’s not who he is.” And I thought, “Oh, I know what it is.” “He doesn’t like to spend money. This is costing a lot.” I know in his mind, he thought, “I’m gonna freaking twirl.” [audience laughing] So he’s twirling, and doing, and doing, and doing. He had been taking Propecia for about a year, to grow this one patch of hair out. And Propecia works, let me tell you. It works. Through this whole VHS tape, this one patch of hair. [audience laughing] And then all of the sudden, this big, lavender thing… [audience laughing] [laughing continues] …comes across the screen. And I think, “What is that?” “Is that a turtle?” [audience laughing]
Thank y’all! Thank y’all!
[audience cheering]
Thank y’all!
[upbeat music playing]
[cheering continues]
[imitates kissing] I’m gonna bring out my family!
[upbeat music continues]
[cheering continues] [cheering continues]
[upbeat music continues]
[mouthing]
[upbeat music continues]
[cheering continues] [upbeat music continues]
