When I was little my grandfather one Christmas gave me a box of broken glass. He gave my brother a box of Band-Aids, and said, "You two share."

Steven Wright is known for deadpan, one-liner “observational” jokes that often hinge on surreal logic and a flat, matter-of-fact delivery. This line is framed as a childhood Christmas memory involving his grandfather and brother, but it functions as a self-contained comic vignette rather than a verifiable biographical anecdote. The humor relies on the familiar ritual of gift-giving and sibling sharing, then abruptly subverts it with an absurdly hazardous present (broken glass) paired with its implied remedy (Band-Aids). The joke is typical of Wright’s stage persona: laconic, understated, and built around a single twist that reinterprets the setup.

The joke satirizes the sentimentality of holiday generosity by replacing thoughtful gifts with a grimly practical “system”: harm and cure distributed between siblings. Its punchline turns “You two share” into a darkly comic instruction—sharing becomes not toys or joy, but injury and first aid. The line also plays with cause-and-effect and the way families sometimes normalize minor cruelty or roughhousing among children. Wright’s deadpan style heightens the absurdity: the more calmly the scenario is presented, the more the audience registers the mismatch between the wholesome context (Christmas, grandfatherly giving) and the dangerous object. The result is a compact parody of familial bonding through mischief and damage control.