> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://martinsmithstories.ghost.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# This Laugh's On Me
- URL: https://martinsmithstories.ghost.io/this-laughs-on-me/
- Published: 2026-02-15T02:22:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-12T19:23:36.000Z
- Description: The legend that is Marty McMurth is born.
- Author: Martin Smith
- Tags: Book 2: The Laugh's On Me

Any retelling of the legend of Marty McMurth always begins with his birth day, when he scored a perfect APGAR score. On that day, his mother, Mrs Martha McMurth, laboured for twenty-three hours. Her mouth howled and her belly ached and her eyes wept and her sides stitched and her bladder leaked. And with one last prolonged suck on the gas, she gritted her teeth and clenched her fists and steeled her loins and pushed with all her might until her first-born entered the world.

‘Congratulations, Mr and Mrs McMurth,’ the midwife said. ‘You have a boy.’

‘A boy!’ Mr Michael McMurth said as a nurse placed scissors in his hand.

‘A boy!’ Mrs McMurth said from behind the gas mask. She released a joyful laugh. ‘Did you hear that, Michael? A boy. Our boy. Our little Marty.’ She took a deep suck of gas and broke into hysterical giggling.

‘I did, Martha, I did.’ And Mr McMurth snipped his son’s umbilical cord, grabbed his wife’s gas mask, took a deep suck of gas and broke into hysterical sobbing.

The midwife placed Marty on the scales. ‘Seven pounds, one ounce,’ she said to the assistant nurse, who dutifully recorded Marty’s weight in his birth notes.

The midwife looked up and down Marty’s slimy, pink body, then at his pudgy, purple face. The boy returned a deadpan stare. ‘Appearance. Two,’ the midwife said. The assistant nurse wrote ‘2’ in Marty’s birth notes.

The midwife placed a stethoscope to Marty’s chest. The boy’s bottom lip quivered and his body shivered as she checked her watch and mouthed a count. ‘Pulse. Two.’ The assistant nurse scribbled another ‘2’.

The midwife grabbed Marty by the ankles and held him upside down. She slapped him on his backside, and Marty McMurth drew in his first breath, released a gleeful laugh and writhed like a hooked eel. ‘Activity. Two. Respiration. Two.’ A brace of twos entered the birth notes.

The midwife pinched Marty on his arm, and he released what sounded like an ‘ouch!’. ‘Grimace. Two,’ the midwife said. And a final ‘2’ completed Marty’s perfect APGAR score of 10.

Still holding Marty upside down by his pudgy ankles, the midwife turned her head around to the overjoyed new parents and said, ‘Good news, Mr and Mrs McMurth. Your baby’s fine. A picture of perfect health; indeed, he appears to be completely normal.’

‘Knock, knock,’ a chirpy voice said.

Puzzlement filled the midwife’s face as she looked about for the owner of the voice.

‘Knock, knock,’ the chirpy voice repeated.

The midwife looked down at Marty, and a gummy, upside-down smile met her astonished face.

‘Who … who’s there?’ she said.

‘Lettuce,’ Marty said.

‘Le … le … lettuce who?’

‘Let us have some of what she’s having.’ And Marty pointed towards his mother as she again sucked deeply behind the retrieved gas mask.

The midwife released a hearty laugh, and as her arms shook and her jowls wobbled and her belly jiggled, her grip weakened, and Marty McMurth slipped from her grasp and dropped head first to the floor and landed with a thud.

Mrs McMurth screamed as she leant over the edge of the birthing bed and stared white-faced at her fallen child. Mr McMurth groaned as he dropped to his knees and gathered his crumpled son in his arms. And the midwife swore as she flushed and avoided eye-contact with the newborn’s parents.

Marty opened an eye and looked up at his parents and the midwife, and he smirked and said, ‘Thank you very much. You’ve been a great audience. I’ll be doing two shows a night, and matinees on Saturdays, in the neonatal intensive care unit until the end of the month. Book early. Tickets are selling fast.’ And he closed his eye and went limp.

And amidst claims of unprofessionalism and threats to sue and humble apologies, the assistant nurse scrawled one last note in Marty’s birth record—*Sense of humour: 2*.