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曾几何时，我还只是一个爱讲笑话的家伙、别人眼中的小丑。而如今，我大大方方地把它变成了自己的职业——一份很成功的职业…… As a kid, I never did anything unless somebody was watching. Even now that’s true. You can’t be funny all by yourself. I’ve always wondered why I behaved the way I did. Then I read a children’s book called Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel[2]. There is one line in the book that fascinated me because it sums up my life.[3] Mike Mulligan, in his old steam shovel named Mary Anne, is digging a hole where a skyscraper[4] will be built. The book says, when people used to stop and watch them, Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne used to dig a little faster and a little better. The more people stopped, the faster and better they dug.” As if the machine was somehow drawing power from the people that were around it. And that made sense to me, a perfectly logical reason to dig a great hole or act like an idiot in public. I was in fourth grade when I told my first real joke. My family had just moved to Andover, Mass., and up until then if I was funny it was because I did stupid, obnoxious[5] things. But this was different. Our class was studying the legend of Robin Hood[6]. Mrs. Alien was telling us how Robin’s merry men were often captured and then boiled in oil. I raised my hand. “They couldn’t boil Tuck!” I said. | 
