Having finished “The 25 most popular icebreaker questions based on four years of data” and enjoyed the results, I’m moving on to a new list:
76 Fun Icebreaker Questions (Not all of which will be used, since some are either/or questions, which are boring.)
Your mission: answer the question in the comments with a good story.
If you don’t have a good story, you are encouraged to make one up.
What was the funniest moment in your life?
Once, a girl I know – not the brightest crayon in the box – wanted to borrow $20 from me, and she promised to pay me back $25 in three days when she got paid.
I calculated the annual interest rate on that to be roughly 3000%, and said “that’s usurious”.
She said, “yes, I’m serious”.
Big words were not her friend.
Her name wouldn’t have been Shirley, would it?
Is that an Airplane! reference?
There are probably a lot, if I think about it . . .
The very first one that comes to mind is once when I was trying to walk down an ice-covered hill, in high school. From the school to the parking lot, at the end of the school day. The car already had all the other carpoolers in it.
Stepped on the wrong patch of ice, with my backpack in hand, and did a PERFECT impersonation of Charlie Brown trying to kick the football after Lucy has yanked it away*. And I’m here to tell you, it was a perfect imitation.
Even as I was heading toward apogee, I was thinking: “This must look freaking hilarious to those all the way down there!”
*And when it was over, my belongings looked like Charlie Brown’s belongings after he gets pasted on the pitcher’s mound by a line drive.
This was the genesis of why I like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin films so much. I can identify with their characters.
When Bernhard Goetz shot those punks in the subway. Had that occurred when The Simpsons was on the air, I could have given the punks a big Nelson Muntz-like: “HA-HA!”
You’ve all seen the scene in “Animal House” where Bluto sees the projector slide of Kent Dorfman, right? He yells in horror: “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghh!”
It happened in real life to me. In my college days, I took a class where we screened Alfred Hitchcock’s “Frenzy.” In the film, to highten tension —of course — Hitchcock has the murderer eating eggs as he talks to someone who suspects him — his girlfriend, a detective, someone like that. (It’s been too long for me to remember.)
Tension naturally builds as the conversation goes on.
The horrible murderer then does something nasty to his egg yoke —
— something just disgusting.
He either knifes it, or puts his cigarette out in it, or pours ketchup on it — I don’t even remember what it was! — but what I do remember is the kid sitting next to me in class letting loose with a most sincere yell of horror, a real-life Bluto yell. And it was not a joke. It was raw emotion. Hitchcock could never have asked for a better reaction.
I’ve cherished the memory with every viewing of “Animal House,” ever since. I had never even suspected until that moment that an egg scene in a movie could affect someone as if their very own life was in danger, but damn. What a puss.
When I was in my teens, my mother, older sister, and I were watching Wait Until Dark on the TV, in a dark and quiet room. There is a very famous moment near the end – SPOILER ALERT – where the bad guy, stabbed and supposedly dead, pulls out one last ounce of energy and springs at the helpless blind heroine with a knife. My mother, my sister, and I all screamed at the top of our lungs, and my father, who had been at the back of the house, came tearing into the room with a baseball bat, thinking at the very least that some crazed murderer had broken into the house. He was mad as hell that we had scared him, and at first all we could do was point at the screen and sputter. Eventually, when we could talk again, we tried to explain what had happened: “Alan Arkin WASN’T DEAD!!! He jumped!! He had a knife!! He almost killed Audrey Hepburn!!” We were laughing and crying at the same time – that had been one serious spike of adrenaline. Fortunately, my dad decided it was funny, too. And I was touched that he had tried to save us all, running headlong into what he assumed was a very dangerous situation. (We also missed the explanations at the end of the movie, and in those days there were no recorders or streaming services. We had to watch it again when it aired again, years later, to see the finale uninterrupted.)
One time I was watching a melodrama, and before the show, an Emcee took to the stage to go through the house rules and various sundry matters; when to hiss or hubba-hubba, where the bathrooms were, etc.. I was seated near the front exit, and suddenly I was hit with a spotlight and asked from the stage just what I thought the “Exit” sign might mean. I thought about it for a moment (timing is everything!), and said, “That is for when things start to get bad in here!” I got a big laugh, the Emcee glared at me, calling me Mister Smarty-pants, and kept making “if Mister Smarty-pants agrees’ comments for the rest of the warm-up. Several people came up to me afterwards, wanting to meet Mister Smarty-pants. My kids thought it was hysterical.
For me, nothing. I am literally the most unfunniest guy in the world and I have lead the most unfunniest of lives.
I can’t say this is the funniest moment in my life(I’m sure I’ve had better that I don’t recall), but this was certainly the funniest most recent event:
I had went to my sister’s one evening recently to take her some stuff. She was cleaning out her freezer and gave me a couple stir-fry sauce packets she doesn’t like, which came with some frozen veggies she does like. I put one packet in each pocket of the open, lightweight jacket I was wearing. She also gave me some frozen potatoes she didn’t like(these turned out to be rather terrible: how do you mess up potatoes?). Those went in my jacket pocket as well.
I left her house somewhat in a hurry since I had things to get done. In that rush, and complete darkness, I shut the door behind me and proceeded to completely miss the first step down from the small porch. That — is a special sort of panic. One foot was still barely on the top, the rest of me quickly tipping down to the void. I dropped my remaining leg and sort of wet-noodled myself down the steps. My knee and shin scraped the remaining steps. I landed sideways somewhat slapping the ground from my waist up to the shoulder, hearing a “pop” as I hit. I hadn’t even had time to catch myself with my hand, which slid along the ground then out in front of me, with my elbow tucked under at my side. I hit the ground, thought “it’s over!”…at which point I was struck on the head by that bag of frozen potatoes. I laid there momentarily stunned(with the potatoes on my head, still in my pocket), considering if anything was broken(nope!), then looking around to see if any neighbors had seen my embarrassing fall(thankfully, they were all indoors and the fall had been almost silent).
I jumped up, threw the potatoes back to my side, and quickly stumbled back inside(nothing was broke, but I was still rather sore). My sister asks, “What happened!”, as she saw me somewhat disheveled, scraped and bleeding on my leg.
“I…fell off the steps”.
At this point, I lost it: It was the funniest dang pain I’d ever experienced. As I stood there describing what happened, unable to stop laughing, I reached my hand in my pocket and realized what the “pop” was: a bag of stir-fry sauce had exploded all over my pocket. She took my jacket to go rinse it out before it stains, and hollers back, “You know there’s money in here?” $8 in bills, completely covered in sauce(change from my trip to the store, which hadn’t made it back to my wallet). I rinsed the bills off and let them dry, but you could still smell the sauce when I spent them a few days later.
What was the funniest moment in your life? Well that depends…do you mean funny (ha-ha) or funny (peculiar) there’s a difference you know.