

	Alex and Stephané Zamorano (Eddie's teacher) met on the comedy circuit

alex borstein

To post your class clown stories, send them to theride@npr.org. Please give us your first name and tell us where you're writing from.

"...I had a very prim, sweater-setted math teacher..."
From: Amy in Houston
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2001 12:13 PM

I think that the way someone clowns in class is a sort of subtle (or sometimes not-so-subtle) dance with the teacher's personality. In high school, I had a very prim, sweater-setted math teacher who buzzed around the room with all the keen obliviousness of a fly. So my friend Motria and I took to switching seats when our teacher wrote something on the board. Sometimes we'd switch three or four times a class, and the teacher would smile dimly at the back row, knowing that something . . . something wasn't quite right, but what was it? A more--hm--eruptive approach somehow just wouldn't have amused us as much. Sometimes the silent, suppressed giggles are the most memorable of all.

"...I thought I had the funniest friends in the world in school..."
From: Rebecca
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 5:28 PM

What a funny kid Alex Borstein found. I loved his song, and the stories Alex's family tells about her as a child. I never lost the need to blurt out the funny things that came to mind, even in college. I want to write something like "after all humor is a gift to be SHARED" but maybe the self-deprecating irony that would make that funny won't come across in eMail.

The piece reminded me that I thought I had the funniest friends in the world in school. We made each other laugh all the time with classic routines such as "piece of hair nose" and "clapping and pointing" and lines from SNL and Caddyshack and lots of other things that, really, just aren't funny. I look back on all that and think, It must have been hormones.

But that Eddie really is funny - please do an Along for the Ride with him!