What are you, a comedian?

Ask some people this question, and they're liable to say, "Well, sure."

They're everywhere - in the break room, on the bus, and maybe even in your own home. Amateur comedians. They make their friends and family laugh, so they'll see a comedian on TV and say, "I can do that."

I must admit, I've said it myself. But I never had to prove it. Not until recently.

The opportunity I was looking for came at the Funny Bone Comedy Club, through a stand-up class taught by club manager Paul Slater. It was a two and a half-month course, ending with a live student show in front of family and friends at the club.

"Don't expect to be good at this for a while," Slater said. "About two years."

There was no way it was going to take me two years. I already had funny ideas. I had watched enough stand-up comedy. Since I was a kid, I had spent hours listening to George Carlin, Steve Martin, and Robin Williams. I'd even read Drew Carey's book. I had to know something about it.

Then I stood onstage for the first time.

We were only introducing ourselves. Still, I was nervous. I had this microphone in front of me, and everyone was staring at me. I mumbled what I could and took my seat; relieved I was no longer standing on stage. Maybe I had further to go than I thought.

We started writing immediately. Our homework was to write ten words to describe ourselves and write five funny thoughts. It seemed easy enough.

The next week, the students came back with their homework completed. Everyone took notes as Slater gave us the basics. A few pieces fell into place. Before we could even consider stand-up, we had to consider ourselves.

First, I had to know my point of view. I was going to be judged the minute I stepped onstage, so I had to beat the audience to it and use it. It made sense, but it was still an abstract concept. I was still working with theory. I needed to practice.

By the third class, we had lost a couple of students. Six of us remained - Geoff, Dan, Matt, Joe, Herman, and myself. It was time for everyone to share their first attempts at writing.

Up under the lights, immediately the nervousness set in again. I read from my pad, sharing the brilliance of my wit. I gave them my riff on the French winning the soccer championship. "These are the same people who built the Maginot Line, and they're telling us they won with defense?"

I started to laugh. Then I realized no one else was laughing with me. The class was staring at me, smiling politely. I went through the rest of my ideas, and my classmates followed. We all had a few funny ideas, but no one had established himself yet. It was clear I had a lot of work to do.

Over the next several classes, Slater became less of a teacher and more of a coach. We went through our ideas onstage, and he told us how we could improve it. He would suggest a funnier direction, or get us to try a different delivery. I tried my perspective on Marilyn Manson, showing how tame he is compared to G.G. Allin.

Slater flagged me. "That's great, but who knows who G.G Allin is? Maybe if you tried that with someone people know..."

Just as my miserable little scribblings started to shape up into a decent four-minute routine, the idea that I had to do this in front of people in a couple of weeks started to sink in.

Everyone in class seemed to be hit with the realization at once. Dan even stopped eating regularly. Phone calls to fellow students increased as all of us tried to figure out where we stood. Matt and I debated the comic merits of routines about stolen underwear and Casey Kasem working at Burger King. The pressure started to peak.

Finally, I settled on what would be my routine. I kept it simple with two topics - my experiences coming from a small town and the Clinton scandal. At least I knew people had heard of Clinton. But I still had to learn the art of delivery.

Despite the best advice, I still didn't feel comfortable onstage with nothing but a microphone to shield me from the multi-headed monster of the audience. No amount of working in front of the mirror would prepare me for that. I would just have to get up there and do it. Perfect delivery would escape me this time around.

The night of the show, I arrived about two hours early and paced a hole into the rug. For all of my dreams of being the next Lenny Bruce, for as easy as it looked on TV, I was frightened out of my mind. I couldn't remember my material, and the room was filling with people expecting to laugh.

One by one, my classmates went up and worked the crowd. Everyone got laughs. Joe taunted the bikers in the audience, and Geoff killed. I was lucky number thirteen.

Suddenly, I was onstage, and halfway through my opening. I had no idea where I was, or what I was doing. I went on auto-pilot, and every drop of moisture evaporated from my mouth, but I kept talking. Then the moment I had waited for finally happened.

I got my first laugh.

Granted, it wasn't a very big laugh, and laughter in general was somewhat sparse throughout the rest of the routine, but I had broken the first barrier. No one roared with laughter, but I did what I needed to do, and walked off stage.

For a lot of students, Slater says, the show is the moment of truth. "They realize that when they have finished the class, they will climb on stage and the reaction they get will tell them a lot about whether or not they should keep doing it."

Watching myself on tape was, to say the least, an uncomfortable experience. I loped back and forth with my shoulders hunched played with the microphone cable with my free hand.

Another piece fell into place - if you look uncomfortable onstage, you will be uncomfortable to watch.

Before I could completely recover from my first time on stage, I had the opportunity to try stand-up again. Rob Lederman, owner of the Comix Café, gave me a chance to go up in front of a paying crowd at his club. I had survived the war games, and now it was time to test myself against live fire.

After a week of reworking my material with Slater, watching the tape of the first show, and with a couple of tips from Lederman, I was ready to face the Thursday night crowd. I was introduced as a visiting comic, and found myself onstage once again.

This time, I was more confident. I didn't fidget as much, and I thought I knew where the laughs were. They fell where I expected them to in the first couple of minutes, and then they stopped altogether. A couple of misfires, and I was trapped. I didn't know how to recover. I ploughed through once again, hoping I wouldn't meet any of the faces in the crowd in the parking lot after the show.

Still, for my second time onstage, I couldn't have hoped for more. No blood was drawn, and I had gotten a satisfying smattering of laughter. Lederman told the audience that I was writing an article on stand-up comedy, and they applauded politely. "He wanted to know what it was like to do stand-up. Now he knows. Wear a cup."

So I've been onstage twice now. Does that make me a comedian? No. To say that would be to insult any comedian who has been working for years to polish his craft. As Lederman would say later, "It is an artform. It is a calculated, scientific artform."

For the students who want to continue, this class was just a baby step. They will wind up struggling for attention at the few open mics in Buffalo, and any stage within driving distance to get the time under their belts. If they are really ambitious, they'll go to Cleveland and Toronto to try to find work.

"The chances for a comic working in Buffalo are not good if they are really serious," Slater says. "Buffalo is a place to start having dreams - not realize them."

Taking a comedy class can give you a start and point you in the right direction, but it can't make you a comedian overnight. The only way to become a comedian is to sweat and to keep honing your skills. Even then, there are no promises.

Stand-up comedy is incredibly seductive. It's thrilling, frightening, and satisfying to be under the lights, trying to make a crowd laugh. And if you're willing to devote a few years of work to becoming a comedian, you just might make it. There is a chance. Just don't quit your day job.