STAND-UP COMEDY : Take My Class, Please : Don’t bother trying to keep a straight face when you’re making a fool of yourself.

You are shy and have an enormous fear of public speaking so, of course, your colleagues enroll you in a stand-up comedy class at the Learning Tree University in Thousand Oaks.

As you get into your car to head over to school you wonder: Why did the chicken cross the road? What is black, white and red all over? Why do I work with people who would do this to me?

A plan must be devised. Since the class is being taught by Christine Kitchenmaster, a disc jockey for KMDY comedy radio, you prepare by listening to the station on the drive over. Within seconds Billy Crystal has you in stitches. The huge semi that nearly runs you over on the Ventura Freeway nearly has you in stitches too.

You get off at the wrong exit, make a wrong turn at the right exit, and finally arrive at the school five minutes before class, drenched in sweat. Biology lab seemed funnier than this.

You are the first student to arrive. As it turns out, only two more will follow--not exactly a packed house for your debut. Thinking back to your high school days, you enter the classroom and head for the back row, historically the safest place. But the three seats have already been taken by a stuffed animal and puppets of Oliver Hardy and Howdy Doody.

So you sit in the next-to-last row, near a stuffed anteater, and you worry about whether or not the teacher is going to kick you out of class for being too serious.

Kitchenmaster, who has been sitting in a seat pretending to be a student, suddenly takes on the role of instructor. She’s dressed in a white blouse, a yellow skirt and tie, yellow-and-white ankle-length socks and a pair of yellow-and-white Oxfords. Funny clothes.

She points out that the room you are in has neither a window nor a clock, just a brick wall all around. Now you are claustrophobic, as well as nauseated with stage fright.

The first thing on the agenda is for the students to take turns standing up in front of the class and introducing themselves.

Liz is first. She tells of wanting to get into television commercials. Then Carol talks about the stand-up routine she did at a mother/daughter luncheon on Valentine’s Day. You are last. There is nothing much to say, since you have no experience in the entertainment field and it’s doubtful you have any future in it, either.

Next on the class schedule: “What is funny?”

Kitchenmaster says that comedy works best when you’re expressing your feelings. The most successful comedians, she says, are those having such a good time on stage that the audience has to laugh along with them. “People enjoy people who are enjoying themselves,” she says. This, you think, sounds less like comedy than a Hallmark card or a 12-step program.

The highlight of the class is when Kitchenmaster plays some KMDY audio tapes. She wants to illustrate a second comedy technique--using the unexpected--by playing an excerpt of an act by a guy named Geechy Guy.

“A cop tried to pull me over for not having a rear-view mirror,” he says. “I didn’t see him.”

“I locked my hanger in the car,” he says. “Good thing I had those keys.”

“I looked up the word definition in the dictionary,” he says. “It said, ‘This.’ ”

The rest of the class time is spent emphasizing more keys to good comedy.

Just before class ends, each student is asked to stand up and tell everyone what he or she learned. As before, you are the last to stand. You quickly go over everything you have learned: Comedy is feelings. If you think it’s funny then it probably is. Everything is funny. Comedy is everywhere.

Kitchenmaster hands you a microphone. You look over the audience. You have them in the palm of your hand. You feel a confidence you’ve never before experienced. You take the opportunity to tell the funniest story you know.

But tonight, it seems, comedy was somewhere else.

* THE PREMISE: There are plenty of things you have never tried. Fun things, dangerous things, character-building things. The Reluctant Novice tries them for you and reports the results. After all, the Novice gets paid to do them--and has no choice in the matter. If you want to tell the Novice where to go, please call us at 658-5547. If we use your idea, we’ll send you a present. This week’s Reluctant Novice is Leo Smith.