Last week, the final week of our comedy class, was grueling. We met Monday and Tuesday nights in order to hammer out the final version of our routines, and even though I was a lot better at the writing, it was still a lot of work.

After the whole Having To Swallow My Pride thing the writing was actually the hardest part for me, because I have what I would call a very hedonistic approach to writing. I love words, especially adjectives and adverbs. I love sentences that run on for an entire paragraph, building up in a gradual crescendo that leads to a big humor payoff at the end.

But if I learned anything over the past 6 weeks, it is that writing for stand-up comedy is definitely more of a “wham, bam, thank you ma’am” proposition.

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Last night I successfully performed my very first stand-up comedy routine at the Punchline here in Atlanta. Even though I did start to lose all feeling in my hands and feet two people before I was supposed to go on, and even though after 6 weeks I still could not work the microphone correctly, I did remember all my lines, and people genuinely laughed.

It was a pretty huge experience for me, and I still haven’t taken everything in yet. So I’ll be back with a more detailed story after I’ve processed things a bit more and figured out how to get all of the spray wax out of my hair (more on that later).

But I did want to let you all know that I survived, and to say THANK YOU!! to everyone who has been so nice and come by to leave me encouraging comments, and to tell you about this one way cool thing that happened last night.

As I was standing outside the Punchline waiting for the show to start, I looked over at the people standing in line and who should I see but the amazingly awesome Miss Doxie, who it turns out is good friends with one of the other members of my class.

After the show I went up to talk to her, and even though she was having a wonderful time preparing for a fun evening of Not Being Accosted By Me, she was totally gracious and friendly, and did not at all mind the fact that I and my spray-waxed, 1980’s-style, frizzy, bushed-out, bouffant-ish hair (pivotal to one of my jokes) came up to confess our undying blog-love for her. Miss Doxie TOTALLY ROCKS!

By the time weeks 3 and 4 of our comedy class rolled around, it was time to get down to work. I’d written and performed about 2 or 3 original jokes by this time, and even if I did not have my classmates rolling on the floor with laughter, I’d realized that it was highly unlikely that I’d actually contract Death By Sucking.

This was hard work. Especially on the days when I’d written what I believed to be the most brilliant piece of comedy ever known to man and the teacher responded with comments like, “That’s the third time I’ve seen that joke and I still don’t get it.”

It was especially hard for me because I so Want To Be Right. And I believe that I am right, and that if I just will it hard enough I can convince the world that I Am Right and They Are Wrong. That my work is funny, and they should be laughing at it. (I’m sure you can imagine how well that worked.)

I finally realized that I had a choice here. I could be “right” and miserable, or I could be willing to be wrong, willing to learn what actually works in comedy, and learn how to write jokes that actually would make people laugh. But I really had to think about this before I could decide. Like, for months.

But I finally decided to swallow my pride (Important Side Note: Pride? Does not taste good, even washed down with regular Coke) and admit that I was going to have to be bad at this for a while before I could learn how to be good. And, I was. And, it sucked. And, I did not die.

And then, one day, a miracle occurred. I wrote a joke, and lo, it was funny, and the class, they did laugh. And it was very good.

Especially since the teacher is just as much of a smart ass as all of us, and every time we grudgingly came around to doing things his way he’d say things like, “Hm, it’s almost as if I know what I’m talking about.”

So I’m off now to the Dress Rehearsal. If I can still form a coherent thought when I get back, I’ll let you know how it goes.

In relentless pursuit of the perfect stand-up material, our participation in these past 5 weeks of the comedy workshop have taught us to ask The Really Tough Questions:

“Now, wait. Was that groin, or crotch?”

The week before I had to perform my very first original joke could be summed up in this way: Extended Nervous Breakdown Accompanied By Painful And Prolonged Migraines.

This was the scariest thing I’d had to do since I had to take my 3-hour oral exam/thesis defense for my Master’s Degree, discussing abstract, graduate-level literature and linguistic concepts in an entirely foreign language. But at least for that I had 4 years of college and 2 years of graduate school backing me up. Whereas with the comedy performance I was pretty much on my own.

And let me tell you something. When you are standing so far out of your comfort zone that it’s not even a blip on the radar, feeling as though you’re about to dive headfirst into the Grand Canyon Of Suckiness with nothing to break your fall, Believing In Yourself and Focusing On The Positive can just go ahead and suck it.

The problem was that I knew what was coming. While I have gotten pretty good at writing humor that people read, I had finally been forced to admit that truly, I did not have the first friggin’ clue as to how to write a joke that was funny when it was spoken. I’d been made painfully aware of this fact by the numerous times that my carefully crafted written jokes landed with all the grace of the Hindenburg plummeting to its fiery doom when I attempted to transfer them into a “humorous” Toastmaster’s speech.

So I was pretty sure that this class was going to be like the military, in that we and all of our old notions about humor would be broken down, in order to be reformed into something shiny and new. (I mean, I sort of assume that’s what they do in the military-I don’t have any personal experience in that area. I’m such a wuss that the only military that would ever take me in would be “The Army Of People You Send In When You WANT To Be Conquered”.)

And I was right. Since everyone was still pretty much operating out of defensive mode, and since we’d received no actual instruction in joke writing at this point, most people tried to go for the “clever”, easy laugh-sight gags, puns, references to sex. (I played it safe by poking fun at my big, bushy hair.)

And after each of us had performed we had to remain standing in front of the class while he critiqued us what (if anything) worked, and what did not. And so the break(ing) down began.

I think for me, the most interesting thing about taking this stand-up comedy class, besides the process of learning how to write spoken humor that will actually make people laugh, has been all of the personality “buttons” that this experience has pushed in me.

And so, being who I am, I decided that it wasn’t enough that I had to-in just 6 weeks-learn how to get up in front of 281 people and deliver a 4-minute, funny, stand-up comedy routine. I decided that this would also be The Perfect Time to take apart various pieces of my psyche, mess around with them for a while, and then attempt to put all the pieces of my mind back together again. Because really-who wouldn‘t?

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Me (to a tutoring student): So, what else are you working on these days?

My student: Well, I have to do a math rap in class tomorrow.

Me: ……

My student: I’m doing it to “Amazing Grace”.

My student: “Oh, pa-ra-le-el lines,…”

Me: That’s…just…so wrong.

Yesterday I saw a young teenage friend of mine, and at the end of our visit she asked if she could write on my hand. I’ve seen a lot of my tutoring students do this, and I was so excited that apparently I was considered “cool enough” by a 15-year-old to become a part of the Ink-”Tattoos”-On-Your-Hand Club.

“OK, you can be The Pimp,” she said.

“Well, what are the other choices?”

“It’s either ‘Pimp’ or ‘Ho’.”

“Uh, yeah, OK, I’ll take ‘Pimp’.”

So here I am, exercising my positive influence over the younger generation, and once again using my powers for good.

A number of people have asked me why the friend with whom I was having lunch on Friday had her own personal arsenal in the backseat of her car.

She is actually a student of Kung Fu, and is about to test for her purple belt.

But the fun did not stop with an inventory of her lethally dangerous back seat. After she finished listing all the weapons with which we were vaguely familiar she told us, “I also used to have a [name of some unpronounceable Chinese weapon] that was really big. I named it My Little Brother but my friend [Important Side Note: a guy friend] told me I had to call it My Johnson.

So the next time I saw him I told him that I hadn’t had any time recently to practice with My Johnson. I totally cracked him up.”

And almost caused a major car accident as the three of us were driving back from lunch at the time, and explosive, convulsive laughter tends to impair one’s ability to drive in a straight line.

Best. Lunch. Ever.