You meet you; repeat.

Hello, good morning, and how the hell is everyone doing this glorious Friday morning? I'm fine, thanks for asking. Another week has passed, and here we are with another post of things, stuff, and other generic terms for items.

Hey, I just thought of something to write about! Thank goodness, because I was dangerously close to just copying and pasting something off the Fox News website and passing it off as my own. For the next paragraph or two (or as long as I can stretch this out), I shall discuss the wonderful world of icebreakers.

Ah, the awkwardness that accompanies forcing people to superficially get to know each other. I've been the icebreakee a few times in my past, but more often I was put in the uncomfortable role of leading these exercises, thereby making me The Icebreakor. Through the course of it all, I've formed some opinions on various games used in these situations and strategies to employ should I revisit them in the future.

The most very basic icebreaker is one I forced on student groups many times during my years working on a university campus. Some of my fellow advisors created elaborate games involving color-coded (and color-coated) M&Ms that corresponded to what type of trivia the students would have to divulge about themselves. That required way too much prep work for me, and so to contrast, here was my icebreaker: "Ok everyone, we're going to go around the room for a little icebreaker. Everyone say your name, your hometown, your major if you have one, and then say, 'My favorite (blank) is (blank).' For example, I might say, 'My favorite two-digit number is 24' or 'My favorite domesticated animal is a dog.' Anything you want to put in those blanks is fine by me, so have fun with it." Sure enough, about 90% of the students told the group what their favorite colors were. The other 10% were a mixture of numbers, sports teams, and music artists. I kept waiting for that one brave soul to say, "My name is Will and I'm from Santa Rosa, California. I'm undeclared but thinking about Econ, and my favorite Central American capital city is Tegucigalpa." And yet that never happened for some reason.

The next game on which I shall write is often called "Two Truths and a Lie." The basic premise of this one is for each person to state three things about him or herself, one of which being a total fabrication. I love participating in this one because I found a great way to have my lie slip through: details! For example, no one ever suspected that, "I lived in Ottawa until I was two and a half" was a lie. Why would someone make up both that specific Canadian city and a non round number age? To fool you, of course. My lovely wife just recently participated in this icebreaker, and used, "Like Sarah over there, I'm also a high school teacher" as her lie. Nicely done, honey. If I had to do this again, I might go with something like, "My Uncle Dave was a co-founder of Amazon.com." By naming both my uncle and a specific company, I think it would fly under everyone's radar.

When instructing other groups for this exercise, people were often not very convincing. I'm not exaggerating when I say that almost half of each groups' participants would stand up (looking frightened) and say something like, "I played water polo in high school, I've been to Europe, and...hold on...uh...I have ten cats." It kinda helps to think about what you're going to say in this one before you're at the point where you need to come up with a lie. Ooh, I just thought of what I can do next time: I could just lie completely for a good reaction. "Hi everyone, I'm Peter. Ok, let's see here. I...ran a three-minute mile once but the government refuses to acknowledge my existence. My father invented the color red. And I'm actually a hologram and not standing in the same room as you. Any guesses?" That would be fun!

(Ugh, I just wrote about 500 words that magically got deleted even though I'm 100% certain I hit the "Save Now" button. I'll see if I can recreate it now. Wish me luck.) The last icebreaker for today (and trust me when I say I'm leaving several on the table) is the Bingo variety. The simplest form of this game is for everyone to have an interesting fact about themselves on a piece of paper arranged in boxes so that it resembles Bingo. Hence Bingo is its name-o. Then everyone mingles and tries to figure out whose fact is whose. I know, we're frickin' extreme. The first time I participated in this event, my new bosses selected the facts for us based on our applications and things that came up in the interview process. Mine ended up being, "I did improv comedy for two years." It actually threw people off because I need to warm up in a group of strangers before I start attempting to bring the funny.

The following year and for several after, I was one of the supervisors and therefore partially in charge of coming up with these facts for the student workers. Sometimes it was dreadfully difficult. In the case of one young lady, there was absolutely nothing interesting that we got from her application or any of her five interviews. She was nice and bright, but she seemed to be very boring at the time. (As it turned out, she was wacky and one of my favorite people on the staff, but she just shut down in the interviews.) Therefore, her "interesting fact" had to do with the area codes found in her home state of Virginia. Ooh, that's special! Another young lady had her job as a barista at Starbucks on her application. This was 1998, and that word hadn't yet lodged itself into our collective lexicon, so that earned a place in one of the boxes. (As a funny side note, someone just sent a resume to our friends Dusty and Dave referencing his work as "a batista." Way to proofread, man.)

My lovely wife just participated in a similar version of this type of icebreaker (which gave me the idea to write this post). After going through some potential facts to put out there, she went with, "One of my favorite activities is playing Rock Band." She thought that might throw people off since it seems more like a male activity, and naturally she was right. That's why we're known across the land as the Most Kick-Assingest Couple of Icebreaker Trickery (and we have matching MKACIT medallions to prove it). SAVE NOW!

And what do we do now, boys and girls? You guessed it, it's time to leave the world of the Icebreakor General and scoot our little tushies on over to the Car Watch.

First off, I was behind a car earlier this week, and I couldn't decide if its plate worked or not to my satisfaction. After mulling it over a little (since I rarely mull anything under), I decided that yes, I did indeed approve. It read, "A(Star)ONOMY." Here was my thought process: "The real word isn't astaronomy, so it doesn't quite work. Although I do appreciate them being creative in their use of the symbol. And come to think of it, the star is absolutely perfect thematically for that word. Huh, I guess I like it. Nice job." I can't argue with myself on those sound points.

A week or two ago, I saw this license plate frame in front me on a crowded city street: "Hit me. My car loves assholes." I take issue with that, kind sir or madam. Let's say we're in stop and go traffic and some idiot behind me isn't paying attention and rams into my car. Even though my foot is on the brake, my car moves forward enough that I hit the car in front of me. By this car's logic, I'm an asshole. I did absolutely nothing wrong, yet I'm the asshole. Or maybe I'm reading the whole thing wrong, and the driver is asking to be punched to satisfy some weird human pain fetish that the automobile has. Yeah, that's probably it. Sorry about my stupid first analysis.
Last but not least, my homey Rockabye saw this on an actual license plate: "GYNODOC." Look, I know that's a profession and a prestigious one at that, but was that really the best choice? It's not as bad as the proctologist in Seinfeld having "ASS MAN" as his plate, but it still strikes me a little strange. (I made up a gynecological one-liner you could use to put someone down. Check it out: "I'm not saying she's a slut or anything, but her gyno said he needed to use fiveceps!" Ooh, burn.)

On that family-friendly note, I'm outstro. I've had it and I'm calling it a week. Hey, what's that in my pocket? It's a big wad of Happies to dish out! (That didn't end up sounding quite right. If only I had a delete key to rectify the situation. Heh heh, I said "rectify.") Happy Birthday today to our good friend Danielle and tomorrow to our good friend Paul. On Wednesday, it's both my Grandpa Harold's birthday and my little cuz Bailey's first birthday. Not only that, but the aforementioned Paul's little boy Nolan turns 1 on Thursday. Last but certainly not least, it's my 4.5 anniversary on Sunday with my lovely wife. Crazy shit going on here, people. As always, please email ptklein@gmail.com with anything about anything. Take care, and have a nice weekend and week, friends.