For most of my life I always thought of myself as a pretty good dude. Since kindergarten I had a decent amount of friends, but I never actually went and did things with most of them because I knew that they’d grow up to be idiots. For the most part, I was right. I had a few people that I would do things with and that was good enough for me. What I didn’t count on was losing my best friends when I was older for the same reason. But life goes on, and they were actually pretty easy to replace in my life.
I tend to think of myself as a funny individual, and I tell people that. I make it a point every day to try to make people laugh because I’m tired of being around people that look like they’d drive a nine-inch nail through their head at any given moment. So it’s my duty to make people smile and then they drop the nine-inch nail, and then I can go home thinking, “I just saved that person with comedy. I’m a freaking hero.”
I also had a beautiful girlfriend at one time my life. When I think about it, she really was the center of all my happiness. Her and I were together for three months and one day, which is still the longest relationship that I’ve ever been in. I know that isn’t very impressive, shut up. It’s impressive to me, and that’s all that matters. I haven’t been NEARLY as happy as I was when I was with her. But that was a long time ago.
My sophomore year of highschool was when her and I started dating. She was a senior, and incredibly eager to get out of here. We met during a field trip to a college to learn more about publications. I was in a newspaper class, and she was in a yearbook class. The two classes travelled together. After the trip, we started talking for a few months until the day I walked her to her car in the school parking lot and we kissed. I had not dated that many girls then, but I had enough to understand that when I was with her there was a different feeling in me than with the others. It’s still amazing to me because it felt a little like love, and I didn’t think that I could experience that at such a young age. She was a little short in height with matching short black hair and misty blue eyes, and she had an amazing sense of humor, which to me was the best part about her. I loved her personality, the way she dressed, the fact that she enjoyed musicals and theater performances, and as a bonus she liked video games too. In my eyes she was perfect.
Although, one of the things that I had detested about her was her ability to argue. It was unbelievable how good she was at arguing, and it pissed me off because I was never good at it and almost always lost to anyone. Her and I argued over trivial matters, such as what is the best Disney movie ever made, but nothing ever serious. That summer, after she had graduated, we were on our way to the mall to spend some time together. She was driving, and we were having a great time just chatting away in the car. Unexpectedly, the conversation turned to how our relationship would work when she went away for college.
I thought about the question for a moment, and I thought that it would be silly if we were so young, and yet we had already decided to deviate from seeing other people because we were together for three months and thought, “Yeah, you’re pretty much the one for me,”  when she was preparing to leave, and I’d only see her once or twice a year? I knew that she’d coax me into staying with her, but I had to tell her what I was thinking. Once we approached a stoplight, I looked at her and I said, “I don’t think it’d be a good idea for us to see each other when you go away.” I never got a response.
A man in an old pickup truck was barreling down the street while under the influence at two-thirty in the afternoon. He had dropped something and had leaned over to pick it up, but neglected to see the stoplight nor our car stopped a few feet away. He smashed into the back of our car, sending us skidding into the busy traffic. As we lost control of our own car, another had tried to stop from slamming into ours again, but inevitably hit our driver’s side door.
Our car had barrel-rolled through the busy intersection, and after what seemed like an eternity had slid to a stop just off of the road. I was barely conscious at the time, and as I was flipped upside down all I could do was look over at her. She was not moving, with a thin streak of blood escaping her forehead and was seeping into her hair. All I could do was shout her name and try to get her to wake up. She never did.
 
*     *    *

During my senior year of high school, I couldn’t care less about everything. I didn’t take care of the way I dressed or groomed myself, so I smelled like I hadn’t showered for a few days almost every day. It was a pretty accurate description, mostly because I actually hadn’t showered. I was very short with people, it was easy to make me upset, and I tried to put some distance between myself and most of the people around me. I was totally fine with that because in my mind, nobody was the same anymore. Everybody had changed from the decent people that I knew to these stupid idiots who thought that it’d be a great idea if a moron like Kanye West was president of the United States. Everybody was on drugs, getting knocked up, going out to parties while I stayed home and played video games in the safety of my own home.
I had a job that I hated to the core, but I always put on a fake smile because they pay me every other week. I didn’t care as much about my grades, and I hadn’t even thought about college yet. My mindset was to only to get through the day, and take it one step at a time. My parents were always on me about finding a college, and I just rolled my eyes and stared straight ahead. I now know how childish it was for me to do these kind of things, but at the time all I wanted to do was be left alone.
I was sitting in study hall one morning surfing the internet on my laptop as I usually did. A student who helps in the guidance office (so essentially an errand boy) came to the study hall room with a slip of paper for me, saying that my counselor would like to see me for “personal reasons.” I knew exactly what she meant, and I was reluctant to go see her.
So I was sitting in her office at a circular desk as I had done many times before. She is so concerned about my well-being, which I am grateful for, but wished she’d take more of an interest in the kid in my other class who looks like he gets beaten by Mike Tyson every other day. I was ready to reject anything she had to offer me. In the past, she offered Parent-Teacher conferences, support groups, religious rituals-which was an incredibly awkward conversation since I knew she was an Atheist and she tried convincing me that God could save me.
But this time was unlike anything she had ever done. She sat on the opposite side of the table, and without a word she slid a pamphlet across the table in front of my face. The top of the pamphlet said “Carrie’s Comedy Club.” I almost burst out laughing. “Why are you giving me this?” I asked.
“You may not believe it now, but I know what you used to think about what it meant to be happy,” she said to me. “You thought that it was a beautiful thing, and that you can change people with comedy. With laughter. I haven’t seen you smile in nearly two years, let alone laugh.” She got up and went back to her desk, and pulled a packet off of it and handed it to me.
“I want you to go to this club. I want you to listen to what these people are saying when they perform. These are the kind of people, much like yourself, who have serious problems in their lives. Rather than going to counselors and saying what’s on their minds and crying tears of sorrow,” she pointed to the name of the club on the pamphlet again, “they go here and they say what’s on their minds, and they leave people crying with tears of joy.” She leaned forward in her chair. “If you start doing this, if you start telling people what’s wrong with the same charm and humor that you used to have, you will start to see a change not only in yourself, but in the others around you. Isn’t that what you always wanted?”
I left her office and collapsed outside the door. I had no idea what to do with this kind of information. According to the pamphlet, the next show would be 6:00 p.m. that night. The packet that she gave me was a form for people who wish to participate in the act. I sat there a few minutes, pondering whether or not going to the show would be a good idea. Since I figured that I had nothing better to do that night, I might as well waste a few dollars on some cheap show.

  *    *    *
Laughter. The moment I walked through the doors it was nothing but laughter. Not because some idiot farted too loud in class or another idiot dropped his books in the hallway, but real, gut-busting laughter. The man on the well-lit stage with an urban-style backdrop had the audience going, and all he did was continue to roll with it. There was almost no lighting at the time, but from what I could tell there was a sea of people sitting at dining tables with waiters and waitresses attending to people from time to time. What was really incredible was the fact that they allowed 18-year-olds to not only enter the establishment, but perform as well.
I sat in the back by myself and listened. The man on stage was middle-aged with thinning grey hair, a plain white T-shirt with cargo shorts and boat shoes. Thinking back to what my counselor had said, I put forth all of my attention to this random dude with a poor wardrobe choice, and I listened. From what I heard, this man had two kids whom he loves very much but sees only on the weekends, his wife left him for another man with a well-paying job and a convertible, his mother was incredibly irritable, and he was on the verge of being fired. And the crowd loved it. He was telling his horrible life story, and managed to blow it off and make it seem like it was no big deal, like it was something you should be joking about.
It was hard to wrap my head around at the moment. I left the club and I went for a walk around the block. I went around that block a few times, mostly because I had no idea where I was in the world and didn’t have a map. But after a few minutes of pondering, I decided that I would give this thing a shot. I sat down on a bench placed conveniently outside Carrie’s Comedy Club and pulled out the packet for submission.
A few minutes later I entered Carrie’s again. The house lights were back on and I could actually see where I was going. I walked up to the hostess and told her that I would like to perform at the club sometime and handed her the packet. She scanned it quickly and then looked at me and smiled. “I’ll tell the manager that we have a new arrival for tonight. Would you follow me please?” No I won’t! I thought to myself because I wasn’t ready at that moment to perform. She started walking away and I cursed under my breath. Now I was locked in with no material.
I was escorted to a small, box-like room complete with two doors (one on opposite sides of the room), a small couch, a large sound-proof window, and a bottle of Coke. I sat there for a few minutes and started to shake. There were a lot of people out there, and I wasn’t prepared to tell random strangers about my problems. I could see through the window that a man had gotten on stage and was talking on a microphone. I thought it was another act, so I relaxed for a moment. But one of the doors opened again, and the hostess ushered me out of the room and handed me a microphone.
I walked out onto the stage, and what made me feel a little better was the fact that the house lights were down again, so I couldn’t see anybody. All there was was a random applause here and there as I reached the centerstage. My hands were trembling, so I grabbed the mic with two hands and I cleared my throat. “Hello, everybody. Thanks for having me. This is the first time I’ve been inside Carrie’s Club, but I can say that I will definitely be coming back because this is the only place that doesn’t have a nest of birds in every corner of the building.”
There were a few scattered laughters. I stopped for a few moments because I was stunned. It had been so long since I had done that, I almost forgot what it was like to make someone laugh. I had to keep going. “I want to thank the Carrie for letting me come up here tonight. I’m assuming he has random kids like me come up here because he isn’t funny enough to do this crap himself.” More laughter from the crowd.
“Yeah when I walked in here to return the packet for performing,  and the hostess was like, “OH MY GOD, THANK YOU! Please follow me, right this way, sir. CARRIE! CARRIE WE GOT ONE!” I yelled, imitating me pulling somebody towards something. The crowd started to laugh even harder now, and I couldn’t stop. As I eased my way in I began to open up just a little bit more with every joke that I just pulled out of my head. I told them about the accident, my girlfriend, what it was like for the rest of highschool. My problems became their problems, and they didn’t seem to have a problem with it. As I told them more about myself, a very unfamiliar thing had occurred to me which made me so happy: As I was telling these stories to people, I actually began laughing again.