Breakout rooms always could use some excitement and jazz. They’re so boring and drab. A little bit ago, I decided to be that extra spice everyone needed in the room. I started off simple with simple gags and worked my way up to doing everything I could to amaze my peers. 

Before I give the juicy details, I wanted to make sure you have an understanding of the people in the room and what class it was for. This breakout room was a group of the advanced kids for our school Newspaper. Usually in our rooms, the Editor in Chief, Aden Schulze-Miller, would talk about pieces we are supposed to be writing and we would discuss our progress. The only thing is that the kids in the room don’t usually talk much unless Aden calls their name to do so. 

Every now and then, I’ll ask a question like “how’s everyone’s day?” and I’ll get no replies. I was tired of being ignored, and I wanted to get these kids to talk or laugh in some way. 

I started off by flickering my lamp on and off. My face would light up and then I would make a funny face to go with it. This, however, didn’t seem to amuse my classmates. I thought to myself that if they didn’t think anything was funny, at least I had fun doing it. I was still determined to get a rise out of them. I had to take it up a notch. 

I continued with my light idea, but this time I switched to my phone light. I shined it on my face as if I was about to tell a ghost story. I finally got some people laughing! One of the students even texted me and said that I looked scary. That was good enough for me!

I kept up my behavior until I had a better idea. I looked over to my markers and started putting them in my nose. This quickly failed because they kept falling out. 

From here, I decided to put an old Styrofoam head from Hobby Lobby in my hoodie. I turned off my camera, and then I turned it back on, and had my fake head in the hood of my hoodie. I began to sway side to side and because my sister was in the room, she was able to see that they were indeed laughing at my appearance. One girl in our group said,  “Ava what are you doing?!” I told her that Ava wasn’t there in an effort to spook her socks off.

I made a guest appearance on one of the students’ stories. I was famous now! The Styrofoam head was a big hit, and surely I thought that would be the final thing I did. 

I turned off my camera once more and took the Styrofoam head out of my hoodie. No one mentioned what I had done which was a real shock, because after all of that, they were still silent. Aden began to randomly talk about candles and I just had to join in. I have a candle on the desk I do my school work on along with a lighter. I took that sucker and lit my candle for the group to see. 

“Now it’s time to do the fire dance ritual,” I said. 

I let the light of the candle illuminate my face, and started to rub my hands above it to seem like it was freezing in my room. I saw a bottle of water on the corner of my desk and took a little sip. I spit a bit of water out onto the flame and it went out. Now, I had people with their hands over their mouth laughing so hard. I got just the reaction I wanted!

After the 20 minutes of me messing around and trying to make people laugh, I decided it was best to actually do some work. I said peace out to my homies and began writing this piece. 

Now all of that may seem random, but truly it was an amazing experience and I encourage you all to do something similar to lighten the mood a bit (as long as the teacher doesn’t see you, and you’re not causing a ruckus in the middle of class)!