the lunch room - my new laughing place

I've told you about Chicken Bob's non-sequiturs at lunchtime (physed guy)

Today we planned a little lunchtime special day. And by "we," I really mean "I." Today was to be non-sequitur day. Nothing was to relate to anything else. There would be no real conversation only endless amounts of unrelated facts and questions. The "gang" was all for it.

This was planned while Chicken Bob was at another school to be undertaken the next day he was here. We practiced a little bit to see if we could do it and mostly we did.

Today everyone showed up exactly on time for lunch. No hallway lollygagging for this devoted group of teachers.

And we did a pretty good job of not talking any sense. I'd like to tell you what ridiculous things everyone said but I was thinking so hard about my next unrelated comment that I didn't have the capacity to retain the words of others.

I do know someone said "I hear blue is in this spring." Someone else said "My dog has to have two teeth extracted."

Chicken Bob seemed puzzled but laughed along with it all. I don't think he ever figured out what might have been going on. In fact he said that today at lunch was funnier than last night at the bar.

The funniest part of this adventure into the absurd was my most favorite secretary (the one I will knit socks for if that tells you anything.) She's the best tricker on the planet. I figured she would be the most successful at maintaining absurdity. (She did in fact lead to the success of the candy-machine caper.) All she kept saying at various intervals was "The principal didn't call yet." and "I had spaghetti for dinner last night." That she kept repeating these was pretty funny. But then she poured the pepsi that she was drinking out of a bottle into her bowl of popcorn. This was not intentional. It was just that she was thinking so hard of what to say next she forgot to actually drink from the bottle. And it was the best part of the experiment.

Good teachers that we are, at the end of the half hour we discussed our success and failures and ways to improve the activity.

Failure Number One. Everyone started immediately machine-gunning their irrelevant pre-thought of phrases. After about ten minutes, we were fresh out and really struggling.

Failure Number Two. It's really difficult to completely ignore people when they mention a topic and talk about something else.

Plans for the future.

Not all conversation has to be unrelated. A topic can be introduced and after some commentary someone else can interject something irrelevant.

I may be wrong, but I think I've brought the joy of the absurd to the lunchroom.