So what if Dave Chappelle was frequenting comedy clubs before he was old enough to drive. He still suffered the same social struggles as every other juvenile male with a testosterone overflow.

“I’d go to high school, and I’d be trying to date these girls, and man, they’d be givin’ me a hard way to go,” Chappelle says embarrassingly. “Then, I’d go out to night clubs and do comedy, and I got women twice their age buying me drinks. I felt like I was Clark Kent at school and Superman all night.”

Chappelle is the black Superman, and he’s armed with superpower charm and wit. He ain’t scared of no one — especially white people.

But if you asked this unconquerable character his greatest strength, he’d say it was his age.

At 26, Chappelle has lived a decade as a comedian and is already screen buddies with veteran comedians like Eddie Murphy and Tom Hanks.

“If I was older when I started doing comedy, I just wouldn’t have made it,” Chappelle says. “Because when you’re young, you don’t know enough to be scared of anything. But by the time you’re like 25, you’ve seen enough to know, ‘Oh my God, this world is terrible.’

“Lucky for me, I got the ball rolling. And at 18, you’re like invincible. You’re like jerking off four times a day, doing all kinds of crazy shit. You got that energy. But as you get older …,” he pauses for a perfectly-timed yawn, which conjures a change of thought.

“Just like anything in your life, young people are always more comfortable with change. Civil Rights — all that was done by people our age. When advertisers advertise, they advertise to young people ’cause young people will buy new Crest. Old people think the regular Crest is just fine. It’s that thing with youth, man — you got the power to change things, and you’re willing to change more than you’re willing to accept things. And that’s kind of what I mean.”

Raised in the Capital Hill district of Washington D.C., Chappelle grew up sandwiched between yuppies and thugs.

With perpetual tension on the streets and at home (his parents divorced when he was 12), Chappelle was often a source of comic relief to those around him.

“I used to mispronounce words ’cause people would think it’s funny,” he admits. “The first time I’d do it, it might be an accident, then everyone laughs. And I hold that in my pockets. And the next time that word comes up, I do it again.

“I was a pretty funny kid, though, funny in a perceptive kind of way. My parents would be like, ‘Where do you get this stuff? Have we been cursing around you?'”

Chappelle’s grade school peers always told him he was funny, but it took him until he was 14 to realize comedy was his passion.

He checked out local comedy clubs and convinced one owner to let him perform at an open-mic night. Since he was far from the legal drinking age, his mom had to escort him to his gigs.

“When I started doing stand-up, I didn’t know comedians had, like, material,” Chappelle remembers. “I would go up and do different stuff. Then, I watched other guys, and I said, ‘Hey, he said that last night.’ Then I figured out I had to put an act together.”

Chappelle’s act, though it took a few years to fine-tune, is what set him apart from other aspiring comedians at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, where he enrolled after high school.

By the time he had graduated college and moved to New York City, his creative mesh of social commentary and harsh slams was earning him comparisons to Richard Pryor — one of Chappelle’s heros.

“Even though [Pryor’s] jokes were pretty much about his experience as a black person, he had a lot of white people who were fans of his, who could relate to the human element,” Chappelle says. “Even though they didn’t go through what he was talking about, they could understand what he was talking about. I kinda try to stick to that.”

Although Chappelle continually walks a racial tightrope with his routine, he quickly points out the lack of malice in his jokes.

“People are people, white, black, yellow, whatever … I’m gonna make you laugh,” he says. “My secret is, if I have fun, everybody has fun.”

Chappelle’s stage attitude comes off in casual conversation. He always keeps his cool, giving insight when you expect a one-liner and dropping jokes when you expect sappy stories.

“I try not to put too much pressure on myself ’cause I wanna have fun,” he says. “Something about doing comedy for a while — it’s like any job, you don’t get nervous going to work.”

His conversation may be unpredictable, but one thing you can always expect from Chappelle is a full calendar.

In his short movie career, he has plunged himself into more films than a hyperactive porn star.

Debuting in 1995’s “Men In Tights,” Chappelle followed with “The Nutty Professor,” “Con Air,” “Half Baked” (which he co-wrote), “You’ve Got Mail” and “200 Cigarettes.”

At one time, Chappelle was working entire days on “Mail” and entire nights on “Cigarettes.”

“It was weird, man. Sitting in a cab all night with Courtney Love, talking crazy all night,” he says, dropping a bit of disco dialect. “It was fun, too, because it was the first time I had ever done movies in New York. I live there, but I had never worked there.”

Chappelle’s upcoming projects include “Ballbusted” with Norm Macdonald and “Blue Streak” with Martin Lawrence. He also signed a deal with Universal Pictures to star and co-produce a true-life tale of famed New York street comedian Charlie Barnett — another of Chappelle’s heroes.

“That guy was raw dawg,” Chappelle says. “He would run all over the tables and chairs, never used a mic. Watching him in Washington Park was some of the most fun I’ve ever had in my career.

“Just by taking me outside, it kind of just hit me, how to be a more powerful actor. And the park is one of the best venues I’ve ever played. It’s so much different. You have to convince someone on the street that you’re funny enough to be late for their lunch hour.”

Chappelle enjoys street comedy so much, he occasionally hits the park for a routine or two when he’s in the City.

“My chops aren’t as tight,” he admits. “If you don’t do it a lot, it’s hard on your voice. But I love it. I’ll always take a crack at it.”

Getting Chappelle back to the park is the hard part. Not only is he Hollywood’s hot ticket, he’s enjoying every bit of filmmaking.

“I’ll tell you this, man, and this is not the Hollywood bulldoody,” Chappelle says. “I have been lucky enough to have fun on pretty much all of my movies. You know, when you do a movie, it can potentially always be a disaster there’s so many large personalities on a movie set.

“Every movie I’ve done, the people I get to work with are the least pretentious people. Like when I did ‘Nutty Professor,’ I was scared to meet Eddie Murphy ’cause I hear all these stories. But when you meet him, he’s just a funny, nice guy.”

Moviegoers may be screaming for more Chappelle, but television audiences haven’t been as kind. A 1996 sitcom created by George Fergus (“Home Improvement”) and starring Chappelle lasted for only four episodes.

“The way it works, if you have an original idea, or a specific kind of comedy, the network will say, ‘Well, that’s great. Why don’t we figure out a way to make it so everyone likes it,'” Chappelle explains. “And what they think is for everybody is really not.

“It’s so hard to get a show that’s funny, like a ‘Seinfeld’ or anything like that — those shows are freak accidents. If the network knew it was going to be that funny, they would have never put it on.”

While Chappelle says he may return to TV when he’s older, he has a lot left to prove on the stage and the big screen.

“My ultimate goal in show business is this: There’s a thing that entertainers have with their audience. If you touch them one good time, they’ll love you forever. I’d love to do something so good, so real, that people go, ‘That guy made me laugh.’ I want to do one for the masses.”

Dave Chappelle performs Saturday at the Lied Recreation Center at 8 p.m. Tickets are $5 for students, $10 for student guests. Iowa State ID and fee card are required for admission.