klugness

Imagining Things

Of Ice Breakers and Audibles

December 11, 2022 by Klugmeister

It was 1977. I sat in a large classroom on the first day of high school.

My English class was team-taught by two teachers responsible for a group of students about twice the usual class size. As an ice-breaker exercise, the teachers had organized us into pairs where the two students seated next to each other were responsible for introducing each other to the class. To facilitate the introductions, the teachers had provided a script of four or five standard questions that needed to be asked of each pair. It was an innovative approach—none of my other teachers made use of any type of ice-breaker. The exercise probably also helped ease the nervousness that accompanies the first day at a new school.

This image of a "note card with ice breaker questions" was created by Klugmeister with help from no one.

Yes, I was pretty nervous about the first day of high school, as it represented a big change for me and others from my elementary school. Since there was no middle school in my zone, elementary school ran from 1st through 7th grades, and high school ran from 8th through 12th grades. The passage from 7th grade to 8th grade felt like being removed as king of the hill and relegated to the anthill. I imagine the transitions for school systems that had a middle school were somewhat easier, as there were more transitions, which meant each one was not as drastic. As it was, the 12th graders looked like giants to my 8th grade self. If one of them thumped me on the head, I’d probably get a concussion.

To compound the “starting over again from the bottom” awkwardness, there was no standard word to describe 8th graders as there was with 9th graders (freshmen), 10th graders (sophomores), etc., so the custom at this high school was to refer to 8th graders as “worms.” It sounds awfully condescending, but many of us probably deserved to be ridiculed, as the dorkier 8th graders didn't have enough sense to know it wasn't cool to run to lunch. They were hungry, and like shingles, they didn't care. Or perhaps I should be honest and use the word "we" or "I." I was hungry, and I didn't care. Luckily, it wasn't yet time for lunch, so I was more focused on the ice breaker.

In preparation for the ice breaker introductions in this super-sized English class, I’d dutifully shared my answers to the canned questions with a redheaded fella named Jeff, and we were waiting for our turn to introduce each other. Since we were situated near the last of the groups to present, I had the opportunity to hear the answers most of my classmates were giving. It soon became clear that a pattern was emerging for one of the ice breaker questions. Over half of my fellow worm classmates had selected “Saturday Night Live” as their favorite TV show, whereas I’d selected “Happy Days.” Seeing the trend, I suppose I could have asked Jeff to change my answer so that I could better fit in, but I’ve never been the type to follow the crowd.

Even so, I wondered why I had not gotten the memo that “Happy Days” was sooo last week, while this strange mystery show that I’d never heard of had become very popular. Since I've never been a night owl, it's perhaps not surprising that I wasn't clued into Saturday Night Live during 8th grade. Even on weekends, I was fairly oblivious to whatever was happening at 11:30 p.m. and later. To this day I find New Year's Eve annoying because it calls for me to stay up till midnight. Ugh.

While I profess not to have been aware of Saturday Night Live at that time, I do have vague memories of dorky classmates doing excerpts of a skit that I now know is from that era's Saturday Night Live. After hearing these classmates walk around saying "oh nooo! Mr. Bill" in a high pitched voice, I didn’t feel any desire to check out whatever show featured these skits. In fairness, the skits may have been funnier than I imagined them to be; anyone who has tried to imitate or describe a funny skit to someone else in order to convince them it’s funny and entice them to want to see it has probably come up short. Yeah, you pretty much have to see the skit for yourself. For example, I've always found SNL's "More Cowbell" skit (2000) to be very funny, though I am at a loss to explain logically why it's funny.

As for the “Happy Days” series, it is ironic that the TV show that coined the phrase “jumped the shark” did so on my behalf right around the time of the infamous September 20, 1977 episode where Fonzie jumped the shark on water skis. The show remained popular for years afterwards (it ran through 1984), but that episode is flagged as the inflection point where the show became no longer cool. Even so, I imagine that readers of this blog are probably more surprised that I'd never watched Saturday Night Live than that my favorite show was still Happy Days.

I must admit that I’m not sure what the theme or main point of this story is. For some reason, I felt strongly that I wanted to tell this story. Maybe the story is kind of like "More Cowbell" in the sense that it's hard to identify the theme, just as it's hard to suss out why the cowbell skit is funny. Luckily, since this story is highly unlikely to show up on the SAT, there’s no screaming need to identify the theme. Whew!

But...the realization that I’d missed the boat on Saturday Night Live wasn't the end of the ice breaker story. Au contraire, mon frère! To put a cherry on top, redheaded Jeff pulled a fast one on me by doing an audible on one of my responses: he changed my favorite hobby or interest from whatever I said—playing tennis? listening to music? I don't remember—to a different answer. He suddenly sputtered out “and he likes sex,” then quickly sat down with a wry smirk on his face. Meanwhile, I gave him a mean look, and our proper southern belle teachers were temporarily frozen with open mouths. They couldn't believe that one of their students would sully an otherwise wholesome discussion by providing a totally inappropriate answer to that ice-breaker question, but they eventually gathered themselves and went on to the next pair.

My uptight 13-year-old self was irked about the situation. My more mellow late-50s self looks back at this situation and laughs.

Ha!