Turns out my high school class president is now a full-time comedian. I'd make some smart-aleck comment about that being indicative of the quality of my public school education, but Rajiv is actually a pretty intelligent guy. And, from what I choose to recall of my adolescence, a pretty nice guy to boot. (Irrelevant side: why do we use the phrase "to boot"? Sounds like I want to give him a kick in the pants.)
I remember three main things about Rajiv. The first is from our freshman year at Fairfield High School, the first day, in English class. The teacher's doing roll call and gets to Rajiv Satyal. She takes her time to pronounce it... "Rah-zheev Saht-yawl"... and immediately asks if she's said his name correctly.
Rajiv: Almost.
Teacher: Well, how do you pronounce it?
Rajiv: Rah-zheev Saht-yawl
Class: Ha, ha, ha...
The ironic? coincidental? thing about all this is it's similar to part of Rajiv's stand-up routine (go ahead, google "rajiv pronounce" and you get a ton of links, the first one being one of his clips on YouTube). From this incident, I (in my pathetic attempt to be humorous myself) would refer to him as "Almost Rajiv. Because he's almost there." (Please stop groaning.)
The second thing I remember about Rajiv is that he would either write "Just Do It" or "Vote for me - Class Clown" (or both!) every time he'd condescend to sign my yearbook.
Lastly, I remember "working" with Rajiv in Peer Counselors/Helpers/Do-Gooders. Don't know if he did that because he was truly a nice guy and wanted to help his peers, or because it might help him get more votes when running for class president/look good on his college resume, but I prefer to think it was the former.
Good luck, Rajiv! Oh, and by the way, Toledo does have a Comedy Club. *cough*
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