It’s funny, or perhaps a shame, how humor, once you realize it’s a tool to communicate, slides headfirst into seriousness: I find myself constantly exaggerating, in the manner of a joke: “I haven’t had a vacation since the late 1800s;” “no one outside of this university has used this software in 79 years;” “time to go home for Christmas and hear about all the orphanages my family members have burned down lately.” All with the fear that if I said a simple truth, people would take it literally but not seriously, and so I have to say something that’s a little bit realer (but sounds more like a joke) than the actual truth