My One-hundred-and-twenty-sixth Post

So most of you Office fans out there remember the episode when Michael asked his employees to share stories about loved ones who had died. Ryan told a story about how his Uncle Mufasa had died in a wildebeest stampede in Africa (clearly using the very recognizable plot from The Lion King). This scene has inspired a game called My Uncle Mufasa, which works in a similar fashion. You basically tell a well-known story, only you slightly alter it so that it happened to someone you knew. The listeners have to try to identify what the original story was. As they figure it out, they raise their hands, and the last one to get it loses. Usually you’ll start off with something obscure (“An old friend of mine grew up working in a circus act, but he quit when his entire family died in a freak accident”), and then as the story goes on, you can make it more obvious (“Eventually he became the ward of a famous millionaire. They ended becoming partners and formed an awesome dynamic duo.”). If there are people who still don’t get it, you can become a little more forceful (“It’s a good thing he paired up with that millionaire, otherwise he might have resorted to robbin’ people to get by.”). It’s a fun game, especially if you’re playing with a good group of people.

So the point of telling you this is so I can share this humorous incident from my history class last night. We were discussing the Great Depression, and the professor asked if anyone had any stories about the lives of their ancestors from that period. Several people shared brief anecdotes, and one guy raised his hand and told how his great-great-grandfather had moved his large family from Lithuania to Chicago in hopes of improving their lives. But, when he lost his job at the meatpacking plant, he ended up doing dirty deeds for the political bosses in the area just to survive. (In case you didn’t recognize it, that is a very brief plot synopsis of The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, which we had read the month before.) Now this was towards the end of a 2½ hour class, and most of the students were zoned out or sleeping. Those of us who were actually paying attention, though, started looking around wildly trying to catch someone’s eye to confirm that, yes, that really did just happen. The professor just smirked slightly, and commented that perhaps the guy’s grandfather should have written a book about his experiences. Then he called on another guy who was raising his hand who told a story about how his family had owned a farm in Oklahoma, but that it had been destroyed in the Dust Bowl. They had to migrate to California looking for work as fruit pickers and ended up living in an abandoned railroad car until the economy recovered. (This, of course, was an adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath.) I couldn’t believe it! We were actually playing My Uncle Mufasa in the middle of a history class! And it was hilarious! I think our professor started to sense how far this could get out of hand when three more hands went up. He ended the class discussion and continued on with the rest of his lecture. I can’t even begin to tell you how happy it made me.



**Warning** Some parts of this incident may have occured only in my imagination. But, trust me, it's more fun to imagine they're real.