Funny/not funny

Yesterday my granddaughter was reading us riddles out of a joke book when she stumped us with this one: What has four letters, sometimes has nine letters, and never has five letters?

I'll give you a minute to think about that. 

Keep thinking.

It's pretty obvious once you see the answer.

But maybe that's a little deceptive, because the secret is that there is no answer--because it's not a riddle.

Rather, it's a statement of fact: What has four letters, sometimes has nine, and never has five.  The thing that makes it funny is that it's not a joke at all.

I'll tell you what else is not a joke: sitting in a room full of campus decision-makers as an IT guru introduces a new database that attempts to quantify how each department, program, and course contributes to the College's mission. It's bad enough that this meeting was scheduled for 3:00 p.m. on the last Friday of classes, but the moment that made me want to slide under the desk occurred when the IT guru decided to use the English department as an example: "You can see here that the department as a whole brings in a decent amount of revenue, but when you scroll down to these low-enrollment classes, you can see that they're costing the College more than they bring in," and as he says it, he's pointing at the very sad number for a class I'm teaching right now.

Does it matter that students are doing remarkable work in that class? The database doesn't care. When the Powers That Be look at all the factors that determine how much a department contributes to the College's mission, this database will be only one piece of evidence they consider--but it's the most easily quantifiable piece, so it will surely loom large. No one's threatening to stamp out the English department, but it certainly doesn't feel great to be held up publicly as an example of someone whose contributions to the College fall into the negative numbers.

And on my birthday, no less! I had a hard time shaking off the glumness until I went to a colleague's house for a wreath-decorating party, where we ate comfort foods, juggled hot-glue guns, and helped each other tie bows in pretty holiday ribbon while friendly dogs looked on curiously from underfoot. It turns out that I'm not very good at decorating wreaths, but neither am I very bad. Fortunately, no one tried to quantify just how my wreath-decorating skills compare to those of my friends and colleagues, and if they did, I'd tell them that the experience was immeasurably worthwhile despite the mediocrity of my performance. 

Now I'm spending the weekend with the grandkids and assiduously avoiding the massive grading pile while listening to the kids tell silly jokes, and if you ask me how much fun I'm having, I'll say what? (Four letters.)