One of my college English teachers always had us “warm up” with writing drills before class.  She’d write a prompt on the board and we’d spend a few minutes writing it in our journal.  The other day I stumbled across one of those entries entitled “My Top 10 Favorite Things,”  which I kinda got a kick out of. It was a list of my top 10 favorite things in the world, excluding people. Most of them still rang true.

Later I was talking to this guy, and he said something about how much he liked getting new shoes, and I, being for some reason really excited that we had this extremely general thing in common, blurted out, “Me too! It’s on my top 10 favorite things list!” New shoes were number 9, if you were wondering.

After a brief explanation, we ended up getting a really great conversation out of it. We swapped lists, 1 favorite thing at a time (he had to come up with his on the spot).   It was a really fun and unique way to get to know him, and we laughed so hard that we cried, which is, incidentely, number 2 on my list.  He teased me about my #1 ranked favorite thing, and I just about died when “dogs with sunglasses” came up on his list.  It was also an easy way for me to find out what he valued in life.  Topics like family and friends, recreational activities, past adventures, and things we had in common all came up either directly from a favorite thing or from a story connected to it.

No matter what the reason I’m getting to know someone, it’s always so much nicer when a sort of natural humor and genuine interest are involved.  Having this as a tool on hand just in case something doesn’t naturally break the ice is a fun way to bring some fun into an introduction, or just as a way to get to know someone better.