(In acting class, our teacher is talking about character and monologues. She gives an example of Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz.”)
Teacher: “There’s many things you need to know about a character when you perform him or her onstage, whether it’s their age, character traits, location, or backstory.”
(After three minutes of discussion, she comes up with this:)
Teacher: “There’s some things that you don’t really need to know about your character unless it’s explicitly stated, like religion for example. I don’t care if Dorothy likes or hates the Flying Spaghetti Monster.”
(We are at my aunt’s house and there has been a blackout. My aunt turns on a battery-powered light in the kitchen, and my sister and cousin start making shadow puppets with it.)
Sister: *holds up two fingers in front of the light* “Look, a bunny!”
Cousin: *holds up her whole hand in front of the light* “Look, a turkey!”
Aunt: *picks up her coffee pot and holds it in the light* “Look, a coffee pot!”
(I’m reading a list of patron saints on the Internet, and chatting about it over text with my mom. A little while before this, I’d mentioned the fact that out of four patron saints of pregnancy, three are male.)
Me: “THERE’S A PATRON SAINT OF LUMBERJACKS! MY LIFE IS COMPLETE!”
Mom: “YAY!”
Me: “HE EVEN HAS A FLUFFY BEARD!”
Mom: “OF COURSE HE DOES; HOW COULD HE NOT?”
Mom: “Actually, after the pregnancy-saint talk, I want the patron saint of lumberjacks to be a super-dainty gay man.”
Me: “Actually, yes, please. That’s the only thing that would be better than this.”
(I am in Honors French 3, and we are learning verbs that have to do with love and hate. Our teacher is trying to get us to write a story about love. This all takes place in French. Sophie and Jacques are the story’s characters.)
Teacher: “So, Jacques tries to find Sophie but he can’t, and starts crying. Then what?”
Student #1: “Sophie comes over.”
Teacher: “And asks, ‘Why are you crying?’ And he says, ‘I thought I’d never find you.’ And then what happens?”
Student #2: “Sophie kills Jacques!”
Teacher: “With what?”
Student #3: “A fork!”
Teacher: “How?”
Student #4: “She stabs him in the eye, then the ear.”
Teacher: “So, Jacques falls to the ground, and then what happens?”
Student #5: “Sophie eats Jacques!”
Teacher: “This is in a park… What do the people walking by say?”
Student #6: “They also start eating Jacques! It’s a buffet!”
(We all found this hilarious and couldn’t stop laughing. The teacher called our sense of humor macabre.)
(My husband and I are driving on a road near our house where they are putting up a natural food store right next to a restaurant. It looks like it’s almost touching the restaurant.)
Me: “It looks like they’re spooning one another.”
Husband: “Store sex! Does this mean they’re going to have kiosks?”
