Photo by Freepix
by Jessica Klimesh
It’s your turn to respond to the first-day-of-class icebreaker, and since the seminar room is so ungodly cold, you rub your hands over your goose-bumped arms and joke that being on fire actually sounds good right about now. But Ray, your randomly assigned partner, doesn’t even crack a smile, and instead says that freezing to death is actually the better option and then proceeds to mansplain why. You search his face for a hint of awareness, for something beyond mere ego, and are reminded of a chemist you briefly dated, who was always making jokes you understood but didn’t think were particularly funny, and when you only smiled or chuckled politely instead of belly-laughing the way he wanted you to, he’d say, “It’s science lab humor—you wouldn’t get it.”
Matching Ray’s gravitas, you say, “Actually, the chances of dying by either freezing or burning are relatively slim anyway—the question really should be whether we’d rather die from a heart attack or cancer or suffer from a neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer’s or ALS.” Ray then says that you’re taking the whole exercise way too seriously. “It’s all just hypothetical,” he adds, “a way to get to know each other.”
Jessica Klimesh is a writer and editor whose creative work appears in a variety of literary journals. Learn more at jessicaklimesh.com.
