"Nick, I See You're Smiling." (Dang it...)

While I was sitting in class today, my mind wandered a bit to last night when I watched a few videos of a stand-up comedian's jokes about food labels. One of them in particular was so funny that when I remembered it I started to smile. My class isn't very big, about a dozen people sitting around a long table, and there was a friendly, informal tone about the class. I knew the teacher would notice my smile and ask about it. I repressed my amusement for a little while, but then I got caught. The teacher looked at me and said,

"Nick, I see you're smiling. Was it triggered by something I said?"

Now I was stuck in that awkward but humorous situation in which I was expected to share something, the reason for my look of amusement. Feeling embarrassed, I explained the situation, as well as the joke. Luckily, the joke was actually somewhat relevant to the class discussion. We were talking about editing instruction manuals, and the comedian had made jokes about cooking instructions on food packaging (in particular, Pop Tarts). I was not alone, a classmate revealed that she had that exact joke in mind earlier in the class. She just did a better job of hiding her amusement, I guess.

In any case, I am grateful for a humorous moment I had in class today. It was slightly embarrassing, but the informal tone of the class was such that we could all feel generally comfortable being ourselves in our discussions and conversations.