ABSTRACT
Being smart and being serious are traits that teachers value. However, we can become so serious that we leave no place for humor in the classroom. Like many academics and/or intellectuals, I did not grow up thinking that humor was important. Instead, all through high school I was known for being serious. Much of my seriousness was a psychological response to un-happiness in our dysfunctional household. No one we encountered at school, student or teacher, was allowed to inf uence us, because our patriarchal-tyrannical caring parents believed only they should have the power of inf uence. It was always a struggle to navigate the space between the rules of home and the knowledge at school; trying to f gure out what to keep from parents and what to share produced a split mind. Fundamentally, it made it hard to let go and experience pleasure at home or school.
