So first let me get one thing straight: I completely understand the need to accelerate bonding and facilitate superficial connections amongst groups of people who would otherwise awkwardly limp along toward group unity, especially in situations where a strong group dynamic is necessary for support and accomplishment of shared goals. I get it. But I can find nothing more exaggeratedly awful than the teambuilding exercise, or the related, probably even more awful, icebreaking activity, especially in a setting where everyone participating is at least kind of an adult. I don't want to hold onto your sweaty hand for an hour while we figure out different positions into which we could contort ourselves to undo a gigantic human knot, that we entered into under false pretenses anyway, because someone told us to twist ourselves up. No real group of people would ever clasp hands and twist up into a tangled mess under any kind of realistic circumstance, unless they had been told that they were going to need to bond by untangling themselves from each other's knotted grasp. I also really don't need to be tossing a ball back to you while trying to remember whatever adjective starts with the same letter as your first name. There are basically no adjectives that start with the letter E other than really tacky ones, like "excellent" and "exciting" and "energetic," so there's virtually no way I'm going to get out of this game without looking like an asshole. I'll determine for myself if I think you're "adventurous" or "resourceful," but I'm not going to believe it just because you've got to get that ball out of your hands.
Luckily for me, we just did a toned-down version of the ball game - we had to go around the table and say our favorite TV show, or our favorite candy, and then we had to recite back all of the favorites and names of the people before us. I'm not really a huge candy lover, so unfortunately I was stuck having to confess my favorite TV show. I really only watch two faithfully, and neither one is the Colbert Report or the Daily Show or Arrested Development or anything that smart people find acceptable and endearing. So it got to my turn, and I kind of just had to go for it, so I admitted that Gossip Girl is probably my favorite TV show, other than Project Runway, and that I was not ashamed. Everyone else seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, and confessed to liking other embarrassing television programs, like Ace of Cakes and Gray's Anatomy, so I guess I was saved. But jeez louise.
