Little Johnny trudged out of school with a heavy backpack and an even heavier heart. He had failed his math test—spectacularly. The kind of fail that made the teacher’s eyebrows disappear into her hairline. It was so bad that she immediately called home to alert his father.

That afternoon, Johnny stepped into the house only to find his dad waiting by the doorway, arms crossed, disappointment practically vibrating in the air.“Why did you fail your math test?” his dad demanded.

Johnny paused, exhaled dramatically, and shrugged. “Well, Dad,” he said with a completely straight face, “the teacher made the questions way harder than the examples she gave us.”His father frowned. “How’s that?”

Johnny grinned sheepishly. “In class, the examples were easy, like ‘If you have one chocolate and I give you one more, how many do you have?’ But on the test, she asked deep, complicated stuff like ‘If I take one chocolate away after you gave it to me, why did I take it?’ I don’t know why she took it, Dad—I’m not a mind reader!”His dad stared at him for a moment… and then couldn’t help but laugh.Johnny might not have passed math that day—but he definitely passed comedy.