Icebreaker Exercise

The pretzel shop Daily Dagger reminded me of a story that happened back at my beloved alma mater:

When I was in college, I took a public speaking class. On the first day, we had to get with a partner, tell one another about ourselves, and then our partners would introduce us to the class. 

Well, I got paired up with a girl who we’ll call Jessica. Jessica was very thin and very blonde. She wore tailored jeans and high heels, even though were in an 8 a.m. summer school class at an all girls’ school (where most everybody wore pajamas). Among other things, Jessica told me about her love for animals. She told me she had two cats and was majoring in biology so that she could become a veterinarian. In fact, she was working as a receptionist at a local vet’s office part time. 

I was a freshman, searching for my identity. I didn’t know what I wanted to be. I hadn’t picked a major. I hadn’t ever had a real job. I didn’t know this girl. I wasn’t going to pour my heart out to her about all the soul searching I’d been doing. I told her that I was from Raleigh and that I had three sisters. I told her that my family had a poodle and that I’d just transferred from UNC-G. She asked me where I worked, and I said that I didn’t have a job. Then for some random reason I threw in, “I’ve kind of always thought it would be fun to work at a pretzel shop though. It seems fun to swing the dough around…and I think it’d be easy…”

So I had given her some dumb facts about myself. I guessed that I would sound pretty normal when she introduced me, maybe a little generic, but whatever. I mean, there were like 8 people in the class, and I figured they’d see my personality shine when we got further into the semester and I could do my actual speeches. 

Well, finally it was our turn to introduce ourselves. We went and stood in front of the class together. 

I went first. “This is Jessica. She’s from New England, and she moved to NC last year to go to Meredith. Jessica has two cats, and she is studying biology so that she can become a veterinarian.” That was pretty painless, I thought. The hard part is over. Now I’ve just got to stand here while she talks about me. 

Jessica began. “This is Mary!” Her high pitched voice rang out, as she gestured toward me. “Mary has lived in Raleigh for her whole life. Well, except for one semester when she went to UNC-G, but moved home because she didn’t like it. Mary doesn’t really know what she wants to major in. She also doesn’t know what she wants to be when she grows up, but she thinks she might want to work at a pretzel shop because it’d be easy…” 

I looked out at the class as each face stared back at me. Ohmigod, I thought. Could she have made me sound any lamer?! Jessica had made me sound like a total loser pot-head or something. I looked like the most unmotivated person in the world. I was the female equivalent of Clueless’s Travis Birkenstock. 

“Okkkk…” the professor said. “Thank you Jessica, and what was it again…oh yes, Mary. Thank you, both!” 

I shuffled back to my seat, silently vowing to never speak with Jessica again.   

Comments

[David Matusiak]

Hey Mary, This story had me cackling at my computer! Very funny how innocuous information can come out sounding very bad. Anyway, you appear to have survived this encounter, so consider it character-building. Thanks for the laugh!!

David M.

PS - I got here via 30threads.com