It was February 2nd, 1998 when I stepped on stage at the most popular and most respected New York Comedy Club. There were three hundred people in the audience and as I sat in the backstage area, nauseous and desperately trying to remember my routine, one thought floated above all the rest, “What the hell am I doing here?”I haven’t always been outgoing or even talkative. As a child, I spoke only when absolutely necessary. I would hide from people, and cry at loud noises. When my uncle boomed, “Hello, little princess!” I burst into tears at the mere volume of his voice and threw tantrums when I didn’t know how to cope with being social. No one would have guessed that today I would risk possible humiliation and stand up in front of complete strangers to tell jokes. Especially not me.I always did seem to have a sense of humor. Call it a coping mechanism, or maybe just luck; I seemed to have a flair for the amusing. Family, friends, teachers, hairdressers, deliverymen, and doctors would occasionally remark at how funny I was. Many suggested I go on the stage, but that was crazy talk.My favorite ‘foreshadowing’ moment was back when I was in the Girl Scouts and the girls decided that I should put on a comedy show. I was standing outside the tent waiting to be introduced, hoping instead to die. When I was pushed in to the tent, I was met with thunderous applause. The girls projected a flashlight on me to make a spotlight. I remember loving the blinding light in my eyes; I was going to grow up to be either a comedian or a cat burglar.“How about those lunch ladies?” I said. “Do they really expect us to believe that’s actually hamburger meat? I mean, has anyone else noticed Mr. Reynolds has been missing the last month?” I did a commentary on our teachers, impressions of boys we knew, and told jokes my father had taught me about a boy who, through a miscommunication peed in his father’s ear. I killed.I’d like to say that that was start of my social blossoming, but it was years before I dared try it again. When Naomi, my friend since kindergarten, approached me with the possibility of making a toast at her wedding, I was working on the night shift at a financial printing company. The room I worked in had no windows and I would get home in time to watch Nick-at-Night reruns of classic sitcoms like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, and M*A*S*H. I was watching the primetime line up of 1976.I had few friends, I didn’t go out much, my BA in theatre was going to waste, and my social life consisted of sitting on the couch with my boyfriend eating potato chips with onion dip. I was bored, unhappy, unfulfilled, and overweight. I had no idea how to get myself out of it but after much apprehension, I decided that this toast would not only be a nice thing to do for a dear friend, but it also might bring some excitement back in my life.At Naomi’s reception, I walked up to the microphone as if I were Marie Antoinette at the guillotine. I cleared my throat of whatever it was that had died in there. A light, similar yet brighter than the flashlights used in that Girl Scout tent, shone in my face. I took a moment and said, “Before coming here today, I decided to ask my parents who have been married for 30 years what they thought made a successful marriage. My mother said, ‘Well, your father doesn’t try to run my life… and he doesn’t try to run his own life either.’Silence. An eternity of silence. Then, a roar, the kind of loud noise that would have set me wailing with fear as a child. But this loud noise was a welcoming one. It was the sound of three hundred kindred spirits laughing. I did a mental checklist to make sure a) they were in fact laughing, not signaling for the Heimlich maneuver after the prime ribs, and b) I hadn’t soiled myself. They were laughing. I was dry. Perhaps those strangers in my childhood may have had a point.It would be only a month later that I was to take a six-week “Creative Motivational Class”. I knew the teacher, Deborah, from an acting class I had taken at Stella Adler. I had this habit of signing up for acting classes and then quitting when it was time for me to get up in front of people. It was ridiculous. I would pay for these classes, take one or two of them, then have a panic attack and no one would ever hear from me again. The class at Stella Adler was the one course I managed to complete all the way through without freaking out so when Deborah told me about her “Creative Motivational Class”, I figured I’d give it a shot.On the first day, which was an eight-hour day, we talked about ourselves; we drew pictures of our lives while listening to inspirational music and we ‘free associated’ in our journal. It was now hour four and we were handed an index card and told to write down our answer to the following question: If you could do anything in six weeks, what would you do? Naomi’s wedding popped into my head and I smiled. I wrote down, “In six weeks, I’d like to perform stand-up comedy at Carolines Comedy Club”. I chuckled to myself over the absurdity of the goal.After we went around the room, and read to one another what was on our index card, Deborah flatly stated, “Ok, we are going to take each goal and give the person advice on how they can make that happen.” I dropped my index card. Clearly, Deborah had lost her mind and they were letting a crazy person teach a motivational class.Remarkably, it’s easier than you think to get booked at a comedy club. You call a club up, you say you’d like some stage time, they tell you “bring five friends and you’ll get five minutes.” Apparently, a friend equals exactly one minute. It’s an odd deal but one you make if you like this kind of punishment. That’s how you get started. You beg, borrow, and steal people to buy you minutes; you get on a stage and try to make people laugh. This is what I did at different clubs around Manhattan and much to my surprise, I didn’t suck at it.Through meeting a series of people at open mikes, it was only four weeks after I set this goal that I was booked to perform at Carolines on Broadway.When February 2nd arrived, I somehow managed to convince my skeptical parents to come to the show. Perhaps out of needing emotional support or in an effort to load the audience with supportive people, they invited my entire family including distant cousins. It became apparent that this wasn’t just me reaching a personal goal, it was a comedy coming-out to my family.As I was about to get on stage, in front of a sea of three hundred menacing faces, I realized that I haven’t just been waiting a few weeks for this moment. I had been waiting my whole life. It wasn’t just about being on stage and managing to make universally humorous observations without fainting. It was about breaking free of limitations I had placed on myself. This was the day that I accepted that although I was afraid of failing, I was not going to let that fear stop me from doing what I wanted with my life.After my introduction, I strode on stage, grabbed the microphone and did the routine I had rehearsed, still nervous, but still there on stage, doing what I wanted to do.For the longest time, I had myself convinced that while I was always quick with a joke, something like stand-up was out of the question. As soon as I realized that I could in fact be a comedian and got better with each show, I began to wonder, “What else can I do that I didn’t even know about?”As the years have passed, not only did I get better at ignoring my pre-performing jitters but I also began to notice a change in my approach to life. Fear wasn’t as much of a factor in my thought process. Working the night shift became impractical, as I could get more shows if I were free in the evenings. I switched jobs, one with a window, I became somewhat of a social butterfly, started to lose weight and, eventually, left my boyfriend sitting on the couch with the onion dip. We keep in touch though, and he’s made some progress himself -- he’s moved on to ridged potato chips.