Funny Stories

Can you laugh at yourself? This interactive storytelling activity helps you find and share humorous stories from your personal life.

Synopsis

The first part of this activity helps increase the awareness of the participants by asking them to look for circular objects. In the second part, they search for humorous events from their recent past. They make stories out of these events and share them with each other.

Training Topic

The activity described below can be adapted to explore the humorous aspects of any training topic.

Purpose

To create and share amusing personal stories.

Participants

  • Minimum: 2

  • Maximum: Any number (working individually and in pairs)

  • Best: 10 to 20

Time

1 hour

Supplies and Equipment

  • Timer

  • Whistle

Part 1. Rounding up circular objects

Explain the task. Ask the participants to quickly look around and count the number of circular objects in the room. Ask them to count as many round things as they can within the next 30 seconds. Start the timer and pause for 30 seconds.

Share in pairs. Blow the whistle and ask each participant to find a partner. Ask the two people in the pair to take turns and share the circular objects that they noticed. Encourage the participants to keep looking for additional circular objects.

Debrief.

Invite the participants to discuss these types of questions:

  • How many circular objects did you find?

  • Did you cheat? For example, did you include parts of noncircular objects that were circular, as in the case of a circular knob in a rectangular radio?

  • Did you count the same object twice, as in the case of a round CD and a round hole in the middle of the CD?

  • Did you treat an oval as a circle, as in the case of the buttons on your telephone dial?

  • Did you count multiple occurrences of the same object, as in the case of all the buttons in your shirt?

Part 2. Laughing at Life

From landscape to timescape. Explain that you are going to move on to the second part of the exercise. Recall that the previous exercise involved scanning the landscape for objects. The next exercise involves scanning your timescape for events.

Recall the last week. Ask the participants to think of everything that happened last week in their personal life. Ask each participant to count the number of funny things that happened. Encourage the participants to be creative in coming up with laughable events.

Ask each person to pretend that he or she has a remarkable sense of humor and looks at life for comedy materials. Announce a 2-minute time limit for this activity.

Share in pairs. Blow the whistle and ask the participants to pair up. Ask the people in each pair to share one or more of the funny segments from the past week. Encourage them to laugh uproariously at each other’s stories. After exchanging the stories, ask the participants to switch partners for encore performances.

Watch and listen. Pause for 2-4 minutes. Roam around the room eavesdropping on different conversations.

Debrief again. Assemble all the participants and discuss these types of questions:

  • How many funny stories did you come up with? How can you improve your ability to put a funny spin on ordinary incidents in your life?

  • Why did some people find it difficult to recall funny incidents? Why did some others find their life to be a comedy? How can you improve your ability to see the funny side of life?

  • What was the funniest story you heard? What made it funny? What did the storyteller do to emphasize the humorous elements?

  • Would it have been easier if your task were to find sad and depressing incidents from the last week?

  • Did you find it difficult to talk about yourself? Was it difficult to laugh at yourself?

Conclude the activity. Thank everyone for his or her participation. Encourage everyone to keep finding and sharing personal stories, especially funny stories, from their everyday lives.