About two months ago I convinced a friend that we should take the new improv comedy class the State Theatre was offering. Led by the theatre’s executive director Ben Richgruber, it promised we’d get better at thinking on our feet, and then at the end of an eight-week session, we’d perform an actual show in front of an actual audience. Well last week was that show – and it was the most fun I’d had in quite some time. Performing on stage was certainly nothing new to me – I’d been in several plays and musicals since I was a kid, and performed in a few rock bands during and since college – but I’d never once gone up on a stage and had NO IDEA what I was about to do or what words were about to come out of my mouth. Ben would ask the audience for some direction, “Name something you did last weekend!” Someone would shout, “Bowling!” And you’d look at your teammates and have about three seconds to start a (hopefully) funny scene about bowling. But it’s not a free-for-all. Like anything, improv has rules – and it turns out many of those rules are great guidelines for living your life too. (If you want to learn them you’ll just have to take the class.) But now a few days after our first and only show, I can’t stop thinking about improv. Was I any good? Probably not. Yet still, in just one night, I somehow got hooked on the adrenaline, the uncertainty, and the high probability of failure. Good times.