Opinion: Fun Fact Could Have Been Funner

by Melanie Hoffmann

BIRNKRANT SECOND FLOOR — The beginning-of-the-year floor meeting was thrown into an unbearable awkward silence when resident Adam Stanton, a mechanical engineering major from just outside Chicago, said, “I have a pet” for his fun fact.

Really, Adam? A pet. Just one. Maybe, maybe if you had multiple pets, like more than four, your fact could qualify as “fun”. Sixty-eight percent of U.S households have a pet. I can’t drive anywhere without seeing a Petco. Pretty much every Tinder profile has a dog in it. Do you still feel special?

A pet. Seriously? A pet. Care to specify? If it’s another dog, that fact is objectively not fun. However, if your pet was a hedgehog, or a Komodo dragon, or a Ball Python, it would be a fun fact. But we’ve all been left in the dark here. And this dark isn’t fun and spooky – it’s boring. 

What was your endgame, Adam? Did you think this would make you seem like the too cool, aloof bad boy? Well, it didn’t, you’re still a sunburnt little nerd whose box of condoms is going to stay full for the entire year. Also, the bad boy trope has already been filled by the guy in the corner reading Nietzche.

The lack of “fun” in your fact could also be seen as a direct attack on the authority of Hailey Hill, the second-floor Resident Advisor. She bought a party-sized bag of Jolly Ranchers for the meeting (which costs $9.59 at Target), and started with a dad joke that actually got laughs, just to have you disrespect her with your utter dullness, ruining everyone’s appetite. Now all the Jolly Ranchers are going to melt in the lack of air conditioning.

Adam, you have ruined any sense of fun and enjoyment this meeting could have had. Just like the girl whose fun fact was that her grandma had just died, but I can’t go after her because she’s clearly still in mourning and I’m not a monster. I’m not like you; my fact about backpacking through Europe over the summer and it really changing my perspective on life was extremely fun.