Rule #2

Last night my friends Fiona, Liat, Caitlin, Katie and I made a spontaneous decision to go to an improv comedy club, Comedy Sportz. Fiona and I had previously been to a Comedy Sportz in Chicago and were quite excited to learn that there is also on in Houston.

During the show actors ask for request from the audience and then are required to play a game or create a scene on the spot involving the suggestions of the audience. Coming up with ridiculous suggestions and being loud have both been fortes of mine for quite some time so it wasn’t long before my presence was known inside the theater.

One of the games played involved audience participation. And being one of the more enthusiastic members there I was, somewhat reluctantly, chosen. The game that I played was chain reaction. Categories were suggested by audience members and the different teams then had to name objects in that category with the last letter of one being the first letter of the next. (Cars: Hyundai–> Intrepid–> Dodge–> Envoy etc.)

The last game of the evening involved three of the actors creating characters and while remaining in character giving advice to audience members on anything really. One audience member wanted to know about anagrams. The “ref” (emcee) for the evening began to ask what exactly an anagram was.

His first gander was “one of those words that reads the same forwards and backwards”.

I quickly offered a “No, that is a palindrome”.

Next an audience member said, ” words that sound the same like to, and two”.

Fiona and I responded , “NO, that is a homonym.”

The ref then turned to me and said, “Well, what is it then, Caroline?“

“An anagram is when you take the letters of one word and rearrange them to for other words.”

“OK, fine. And what is your question about anagrams that you would like our friends to answer?”

“How many words can you make out of the letters in “planets”?”

(Previously in the evening this had actually been our topic of conversation. The word planets has all of the most common letters and thus lends itself to being very good at this game. In “Te Da Vinci Code” it is mentioned that 92 words can be made using only these letters.)

The characters then began to answer the question according to the persona of each. One of the characters lived his life by two rules and thus answered every question with two rules. As an answer to my question he said “Rule number one: It doesn’t matter*. Rule number two: Date Caroline. She’s going places.”

Don't forget Rule #2

Don’t forget it either.

*I don’t actually remember what rule number one was. But it obviously isn’t as important as rule #2.