Teaching=Funny

[pixkris]

Oh my. I just taught my creative writing class. The students are starting their first complete short story, so we were focusing on character development. Part of the lesson involved reading a short chapter about character from Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. This is a teeny, tiny workshop class--only four students due to a scheduling screw up--so we're very close. Anyway, we start taking turns reading through the chapter, and we get to the section about creating likable narrators. Lamott writes:

If your narrator is someone whose take on things fascinates you, it isn't really going to matter if nothing much happens for a long time. I could watch John Cleese or Anthony Hopkins do the dishes for about an hour without needing much else to happen.

Only the girl reading, a junior, doesn't say "John Cleese." She accidently says, "John Cheese." And for whatever reason, this strikes all of us as unbearably funny. We started to laugh and could. not. stop. I tried to take over the reading, but then they'd start giggling again and I'd lose it. I honestly don't know why "John Cheese" is so funny. The visual, maybe? Then we started inserting references to John Cheese into the rest of the chapter, and it was all over.

Now a person's faults are largely what make him or her likable....Preoccupation with self is good, as is a tendency toward procrastination, self-delusion, darkness, jealousy [or an obsession with Gouda]. They shouldn't be too perfect; perfect means shallow and unreal and fatally uninteresting. I like for them to have a sick sense of humor, [to carve little statues out of sharp Vermont cheddar and give them to their love interests].

Yeah. We didn't get much more done. I'm sure this is nowhere near as funny to anyone outside of our class, but I'm still chortling. This is one of those moments when I think that I have the best job ever.

Comments

[kouredios.livejournal.com]

It is funny. I love those moments, when everything else is flowing well and you can just relax and giggle with your class. It's one of the great rewards. :D

[spectralbovine.livejournal.com]

Heeee. Sounds like a good time.

[vwbug.livejournal.com]

Oh, goodness! How fun!

[going-not-gone.livejournal.com]

Let me explain: according to my children, 'cheese' is one of the words that is inherently funny*. Just as any sandwich can be improved by the addition of cheese,** any sentence can be made funnier by adding cheese. Thus your response to "John Cheese" is perfectly understandable.

*the others are: penguin, eyeball, underpants. They are funniest in combination. For example: Cheesy penguin eyeballs in your underpants!

** with the possible exception of peanut butter and jelly.