I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw that my bath toys were a

“I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio.” — in this line of fierce wit, Joan Rivers, the queen of comedy, cloaks sorrow in laughter. Her words are sharp and absurd, yet behind the humor lies the ache of human rejection — the timeless wound of feeling unwanted, unseen, or unloved. It is a jest forged from pain, for Rivers understood, as the ancients did, that sometimes the only way to survive the darkness is to make it laugh.

At first, one smiles at the ridiculous image — a child in a tub, surrounded not by rubber ducks but by electric danger. It is black humor at its purest, where tragedy and comedy hold hands. But Rivers, a woman who rose from hardship to fame, knew well that humor is armor. Through it, she turned the unbearable into the unforgettable. What she reveals here is not bitterness, but resilience: the power to transform pain into power, despair into defiance.

Her words, though spoken in jest, echo a truth as old as human struggle — that those who endure neglect or rejection often grow into the most formidable souls. The ancients would have called this the fire of inner alchemy: the transformation of suffering into strength. Like the blacksmith who tempers iron in flame, the human spirit is forged through trial. Rivers’ humor, biting yet brave, becomes a testimony to that transformation. She teaches that laughter, even when it cuts deep, can be a weapon against despair.

History, too, has seen many who carried the scars of rejection and turned them into greatness. Consider Charlie Chaplin, born into poverty and abandoned by his father. His mother fell into madness, and he was left to wander the streets of London as a child. Yet from this loneliness was born the Tramp, a character beloved by the world — a man of misfortune who made millions laugh while quietly revealing their own fragility. Like Rivers, Chaplin wrapped sorrow in laughter, teaching that humor is not the denial of pain, but its purification.

In the quote, the toaster and the radio symbolize more than dark humor — they represent the absurd cruelty life sometimes deals us, the sense of being placed in a world not built for our comfort or safety. Yet Rivers’ laughter refuses to surrender to victimhood. She takes the image of danger and absurdity and makes it her own, declaring: You cannot break me; I will make even my suffering serve me. In this, she embodies the spirit of the stoic and the warrior alike — the one who turns every wound into wisdom, every insult into art.

There is also an undercurrent of rebellion in her voice. In a world that often expects women, especially, to suffer quietly, Rivers refused silence. She mocked her pain openly, daring others to laugh with her — and through that laughter, to confront their own fears. In her defiance, she reminds us that humor can be a form of freedom, a shield against humiliation, and a mirror that reflects truth without flinching.

The lesson of her words is this: do not hide your wounds, but learn to wield them. Life may hand you sorrow, neglect, or ridicule, but you can still choose your response. You can drown in the bathwater, or you can rise from it laughing, toaster in hand, unbroken. To joke about pain is not to dismiss it — it is to master it, to declare that suffering does not define you.

So remember, O listener of tomorrow — laughter is not weakness, nor evasion, but alchemy. When life gives you the symbols of despair — the toasters and radios of your fate — turn them into your comedy, your art, your triumph. For as Joan Rivers teaches, the most powerful laughter is born from the deepest wounds, and the soul that can laugh at its own suffering is the soul that can never again be destroyed.