How Tumbleweeds Teach: Humor as Pedagogy

If you’ve ever watched a tumbleweed roll down a Los Angeles street (not saying I have), you know one thing: it’s completely unconcerned about your deadlines.

In previous posts, I’ve written about clouds with self-esteem, birds with impatience, roadrunners having bad hair days, and, yes, the occasional dragon who does yoga while accountants panic over magic beans. All of this is silly, I admit. But here’s the truth: humor is secretly the best teaching method you’ll ever encounter. And not just for humans.

Take my tumbleweeds, for example. They roll, tumble, and bump into curbs. They serve as living metaphors for trial, error, and resilience. And they make you laugh. Humor functions the same way in learning: it opens your mind, lowers defenses, and—sometimes without realizing it—teaches you a lesson.

Remember the tortoise in Igbo folktales? He cheats, schemes, tries to attend sky parties without proper feathers—and then falls. We laugh at him. But through that laughter, we absorb morals. We learn: cunning has limits, humility is essential, and overconfidence can be dangerous. The clouds, tumbleweeds, and impatient birds in my stories do the same thing on a smaller scale. Humor also helps us survive in overwhelming situations.

Tumbleweeds teach. Clouds teach. Even dragons teach (if you believe in them). And if you’re lucky, you might learn to laugh while you learn.

I’ve written about being a grad student, exhausted, juggling seminars, writing, and existential dread. Laughing at the absurdity—like imagining your professor leading a war one morning—is not escapism. It’s cognitive flexibility, teaching us to handle chaos with curiosity and grace. And laughter.

So here’s the main point: pay attention to the funny stuff. The ridiculous, the absurd, the impossible—there’s teaching hidden there.

As I’ve argued on my blog, laughing with nature is the first step toward understanding it. And let’s be honest—if a tumbleweed can teach me modesty and resilience, maybe it can teach everyone a thing or two as well.

Good night.