My students taught me that teaching should be fun, but, as with children, I didn’t always enjoy the lessons I learned.

I was teaching a basic speech class and the assignment was to get the attention of the audience. I did not specify how to do this and, in retrospect, realize I probably should have. One student got up to speak with a banana cream pie in her hands. She planned to throw it at her friend in the front row. He was, I found out later, wearing old clothes and had a towel under his seat.

I typically sit in the back of the room to get a good feel for the audience response to the speaker, but that day the only available seat was directly behind this young man. (You can already see what’s coming.) The speaker’s goal was to get the audience’s attention by throwing the pie at her conspirator.

She had terrible aim and missed him completely. Instead, the pie hit me in the chest and banana cream pie splattered all over my face, my clothes, and my glasses. The class went silent. I looked at myself as well as I could through pie-spattered glasses. I had pie everywhere. I was stunned.

I made a sound that to the students sounded like a chuckle. (It was not.) When that “chuckle” was heard, the class broke into laughter and applause. They were hysterical. They thought it was the funniest event in any class they had ever been in, making it the best class ever.

Frankly, I did not feel the same way. However, I did the best I could under the circumstances. I took the young man’s towel and wiped off the chunks of pie around and on me. I asked the girl if she could go ahead and speak and she did a very fine job.

After that experience, the class became more at ease with me and other members of the class. I believe a factor in their behavior was that they thought their instructor had a sense of humor. He didn’t—but he learned from the experience.