How Not to Conduct Yourself in a Politics Tutorial

If you have an interest in maintaining a respectable reputation, in appearing pleasant towards the opposite sex, being remembered for your intellectual contributions to a group and not potentially black-balling yourself from many social situations you should probably not follow the example I set today in my politics tutorial. It was the first one of the year and it’s for a course I dislike, but neither point excuses my behaviour, although it may help to explain it.

Before I begin, it sometimes seems like I need a delay between my brain and my mouth. I don’t have the worst case of foot-in-mouth disease, but I’ve been known to say things that land me in hot water or otherwise strange situations. I wouldn’t want a delay, as that seems like a horrible way to live, but on certain occasions it seems like it’d be advisable. I think in this case I equalled some of my other more memorable Kingston moments. The most comparable is probably last year when I had a 20-second (or so) discussion with MP Peter Milliken about whether a video playing was of heterosexual foreplay or lesbian foreplay, and this was after pointing out the video to him, which I assume people had been avoiding as a topic of conversation for a reason.

Anyway, so it was our first tutorial and I was sitting beside a couple of friends. Our TA came in and introduced himself and gave us a few details about the course and his role. It was all very basic stuff, until it came to the icebreaker he proposed. While a few of my tutorials/small classes don’t have icebreakers, most do – although they tend to be of the “go round and introduce yourself to everyone” variety. However, he said we were playing “2 Truths and a Lie” which I hadn’t played in forever.

I could blame it on the fact I haven’t played in ages, or on the fact I was picked to go “early” – to be quite honest, about middle of the class – but, I think the most pressing reason is the fact I wanted to play the game well, and not cop out like people who said shit like, “I have 12 pairs of jeans,” “I am an only child,” “My favourite show is the O.C.” Those were all real lines used in my tutorial and they were all boring. (Actually, one of one girl’s truths was that she had 24 siblings. I found that pretty amazing. That’s a shitload of people to buy presents for on Christmas and birthdays, but I guess you get a lot back, too.)

The game was played and I tried to follow along, while also racking my brain for good ideas for my turn. I didn’t really succeed, so when my turn I began with a standard and then thought up two more on the fly.

1. I have attended more than fifty-five Blue Jays games in a year…in person.

2. Once, when we were little, my brother and I were playing “Cops and Robbers” and I phoned 9-1-1 and got a police cruiser to show up at our house.

3. I’ve had two hernias.

So, the person across from me was supposed to guess which one was the lie. She guessed wrong, so I had to tell her that, “I never got a police car to show up at our house….my brother made the call.” That got a series of laughs, but they paled in terms of the reaction that came about half a minute earlier.

She guessed #3, so I had to tell her, “Incorrect…I’ve had two hernias.”

Now, I don’t know if everyone knows what a hernia is, or if there is a lot of confusion out there about it. In my defence, I’m going to claim that I saw a few confused looks on people’s faces. So I decided to utter the words for which I’ll always be remembered in that tutorial and to those people and to all their friends and associates and which will make me the subject of whispering in next week’s classes.

“Yep. Both testicles.”