Andrew J. Lederer

while a band, The Highland Shatners, was setting up. It was a distracting environment -- noisy, among other things -- but I thought I was generating comedy at a very high level, though I accepted the fact that some of the crowd probably wouldn't get that I wasn't simply yelling.

Still, afterward, I began to fear that I hadn't been got and maybe wasn't as good as I started out to be, especially since it appeared the main guy in the band didn't think I'd been particularly helpful to his cause. Yes, two friendly hecklers -- at least one of them drunk -- came over to tell me they'd enjoyed me, but that did nothing to convince me I had been alright.

Then, a woman -- just an ordinary, non-drunk, ordinary woman -- came up to me and said I'd been hilariously funny or unbelievably funny or something like that -- maybe she even said something stronger. And I believed her, remembering how I'd originally felt while on stage.

You know what she said?

She said I was convulsive.

And I don't think she meant I was having some kind of fit. She meant (I think) that I induced convulsive laughter.

After that, it was a good night.