It's a no-fail, first-day-of-class icebreaker:
"Think of one weird thing about yourself that makes you different from everybody else here."
I e-mailed the question to the 18 students in my writing class this past weekend so they could think about their most weird thing before our first meeting.
Because I know how it is for freshmen. They're so nervous or lonely or drop-dead tired from staying up all night because, hooray, they're finally away from home and on their own, they draw a complete blank the first day.
But no blanks today. Well, except for a young man wearing a backward baseball hat on the left side of the circle who said with a laugh, "E-mail? I didn't recognize your name, so I deleted it."
Never mind that the announcement said in big, bold writing, "Important Message from your English Instructor." I counted his deletion of my e-mail as his one weird thing. I suggested he not repeat it.
One young woman raised her hand.
"I have four Chihuahuas at home," she said.
No one else had four of those little pocket dogs. No one even owned one. She easily passed the weirdness test.
The next student, a young woman with tired, red eyes, said, "I always thought I was an only child. Until recently. I just found out I have two older brothers. One of them goes here."
Total silence. Even from the non-stop talking student in the backward baseball hat who deleted my e-mail.
"Thank you for sharing that," I said. "It was very brave of you."
She shrugged, sighed and smiled. A little. I moved on to the next student, a young man with nervous eyes.
"I had something else I was going to say. But now, I want to say something about my family, too. Is that all right?"
All right? It was perfect. Unknown to these students, I had designed our whole first unit of reading and writing around "Family and Self." Funny (or amazing) how these things happen to work out. I told the student to share whatever he liked. Even though it was around the same topic — family — it would be unique to him.
"You know how that other girl, I forget her name, said she didn't know she had two brothers? I just learned that I have six aunts and one uncle that I've never met. And they live two towns away from me."
No more awkward silences. Another student jumped in: "I have two first cousins living in Kansas City. I've never met them because they won't visit New Hampshire, and my dad says we're not going out there to see them."
"I have two brothers the same age and two sisters the same age, but they're not twins," another young woman said.
"Irish twins?" I asked.
"No," she said. "My mom and dad had two kids from their first marriages that were the same ages. I'm from a blended family."
More than half the students — New England students from white, middle-class families — shared a story about how different their families were from the typical family. I had to raise the question: "But what is a typical family?"
The young woman with the red eyes, the one brave enough to talk about her family in the first place, said, "There's no such thing as a typical family. No such thing as a perfect one, either."
Stories unique and yet the same. This class is off to a perfect start.
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Lorraine Lordi lives in Londonderry. To order her collections of Derry News columns or sign up for one of her writing workshops, go to www.plumriverpress.com.
