When I was a baby, I kept a diary. Recently I was rereading it. It said: "Day One: Still tired from the move. Day Two: Everybody talks to me like I'm an idiot."

Steven Wright is an American stand-up comedian known for deadpan delivery and surreal, one-line observations. This joke belongs to his broader stage persona: a laconic narrator who treats absurd premises as mundane facts. The “baby diary” setup riffs on the adult habit of keeping journals and the idea of rereading them for insight; Wright subverts that expectation by giving the infant an articulate, cynical inner voice. The humor also leans on the common experience of being patronized—reframed through infancy, when condescension is socially normal. The line circulated widely through Wright’s live performances and comedy recordings in the 1980s–1990s, often quoted as a representative example of his style.

The joke turns on an impossible perspective: a baby writing a diary with adult vocabulary and self-awareness. That mismatch creates absurdity, but it also points to a recognizable feeling—being spoken to as if one lacks intelligence or agency. By placing that complaint in a newborn’s mouth, Wright exposes how quickly people assign roles (helpless, clueless) and talk “over” someone rather than to them. The “still tired from the move” line adds a second layer: it treats infancy as if it included adult responsibilities and disruptions, making the baby’s irritation seem oddly reasonable. The result is a compact satire of condescension and of the narratives adults project onto others.