Jeffrey Sides

After college (TCU), I fiddled around as an Operations Supervisor for a trucking company for a few years and hated every second of it. Then I remembered a dream that a friend of mine from high school had when we were juniors. She came to me one morning and said, "I had a dream last night that you were on the Tonight Show." Then she said, "You had a good set." That always stuck with me, so I figured if you're not going to follow your own dreams you might as well follow somebody else's.

I started performing standup comedy in 1987 under the name Thor Ramsey (not to be confused with the porn star) and never looked back.

Last year I had my first book (A Comedian's Guide to Theology) published, so stop by your local Barnes & Noble and pick it up, because I'd like to write a second one.

But the most significant event of my life was my freshmen year of college when I had a spiritual awakening of the Christian variety. It has affected every area of my life, sometimes painfully, but it remains the single best decision I've ever made. My apologies to all of my classmates for my former self. Like many of you, I also cringe when I think of me back then. (See examples below.)

Being the dumb jock that I was -- I now refer to myself as a recovering dumb jock because there is a point in your athletic career when you say to yourself, "Obviously, I'm not gonna go pro, so eventually I'm gonna have to learn how to read." I remember standing in front of an all-school pep assembly and reading a cue card that said, "Whoa! Whoa! Big Fella!" Except I pronounced "whoa" as "who-a." Thus learning a classic rule of comedy, the difference between people laughing at you and people laughing with you.

I have great memories of Rod Koch and oddly enough, his mother. Rod’s home was a refuge for me, where the dinner table was always surround by our banter and the laughter of his mom, sister and little brother. It was in Rod’s unfinished basement that we first listened to this large black round disk on a contraption that somehow emitted Steve Martin’s “Let’s Get Small,” which was the funniest thing I’d ever heard in my life.

I thought Melanie Menuey had the coolest parents I'd ever met. And when I found out she was related to Rick Robertson, I was dumbfounded that one family could be so cool. It seemed unjust.

I remember walking to Twirp (the most fitting name for a dance if ever there was one) with Cathy Lang and ignoring the fact that she noticed the pound of zit medication I covered my face with. It was skin-toned. I thought that would fool anyone. Maybe it was the blush I wore over the zit cream that gave it away.

I remember double-dating with Rick Wolf, Vicki Gill and the red-headed girl who broke Charlie Brown’s heart, Mona Farely, who I ordered my first martini with, sipped it and gagged. That was my last martini.

Jeff Clem tutored me on the complete history of the Beatles and introduced me to Monty Python, something I will be ever grateful for.

Kevin Perry's home is where I first saw the game "Pong."

Mark Johnson showed me the finer tricks to lifting mirrored sunglasses from the local drug store. (It has to do with long pants and tall socks.)

Most of my memories are painful and embarrassing, which really reflected my personality at the time -- painful and embarrassing.