I didn’t learn to drive until I was 27.
(I like to kick off meetings with a soft chorus of huh.)
When I was a kid I had an alter ego named Rogermund, who I became by putting on plastic gag glasses with a nose and mustache.
(When I left my last job, my old boss said she would miss my warm and quirky spirit.)
Despite what you see on the Zoom, I don’t sunburn easily.
(When we can’t think of a fun fact, my current boss tells us to try a humblebrag, because that’s pretty much most fun facts. My mysterious ability to tan is more interesting than “I make my own salsa!” or “I am resilient in the face of rejection.”)
I make my own salsa!
When I was three, I pushed Robin Williams’ son off a coin-operated horse.
(The big guns. Use sparingly.)
Once I was chased by a deer in Japan.
(Cute, approachable, neutral. The golden mean of fun facts.)
My favorite cereal is a hard-boiled egg.
(Sometimes we level the playing field by asking everyone the same question, like their favorite cereal. This response plays well on the West Coast, where everyone is vaguely uncomfortable at the idea of carbs. This lures the audience into a false sense of keto-security, to be destroyed in three hours when I tuck potato chips into my Jimmy John’s.)
My husband created the new Szechuan Sauce logo.
(Not about me but the crowd is even more white and male than usual, aka will not care about most of my carefully crafted humble brags. They may care about this. Every time I utilize this, my attention-averse romantic partner feels a disturbance in the force.)
Sometimes late at night I like to look up recipes that use Cheez-Its. I will never make them.
(Sometimes you need to lean hard into your warm and quirky spirit.)
This will absolutely be my favorite part of the workshop.
(Deploy carefully. It can warm the room, or be recognized for its deep and human anti-capitalist truth.)
I like to ride my bike.
(We’re in the middle of a pandemic. I don’t feel very fun right now and you probably don’t either. It is so deeply surreal and horrible to watch the government completely and utterly fail its citizens, to see a matter of a public health twisted into political ping-pong to deadly effect. Who’s up next?)