Who taught: Carol

Torso (source: http://philippefaraut.com/)

You might think that I do not study English hard enough when you hear this story. But, look, you cannot know all of the words in English, right?

About a year ago, I was invited to a meeting where about 7 people of the company that I used to work brainstormed and discussed a new design of a few features for a software.

Before we got into a real discussion, Carol suggested to play a game to have our brains relaxed and ready to be creative. So, here is the rules of the game.

1. Fold a paper horizontally three times so that there are three sections on the paper.

2. The first person who only sees the top folded section of the paper draws a head of a person who he/she thinks of. (There is only one restriction here which is that this person should be one of the people who are in the meeting.) After drawing, the first section should be hidden so that the second and following folded section should be on top and the person who just drew should pass the paper to a person who is sitting next to him/her. This way the person who gets the paper has no idea whose head is drawn.

3. The second person who gets the paper draws torso and arms of a person who he/she thinks of that it should be. (It is, of course, highly possible that torso and arms are of a different person from a person for the head.) And once again, flip the paper so that the third and following empty section shows up on top and pass it to a person who is sitting next to him/her.

4. Now the third person draws legs of a person who he/she thinks of that it should be. And.. This person passes the paper to a person who is sitting next to him/her again.

5. This last person now unfolds the paper so that everybody can see the whole body of a person that is drawn by three different people.

This whole step happens for everyone in a group at the same time so that there are as many people drawn on papers as the number of people in a group.

As you can imagine, most of the people on papers are all funny looking as they all have different head, torso, arms and legs. They are not really correctly lined up. So, a person’s head is not really on top of the center of torso.

So, to take one example, Angela drew my head with fancy glasses and Andrew drew a torso and arms but he drew a torso with breast, thinking that it should be a torso of a lady in the group and I cannot remember who that was. And finally, Phil drew legs. Interestingly, I was sitting right next to Phil and I got that paper and it was partially me with very good looking boobs. Thanks, Andrew! (Do you remember who did you think of when you drew that torso?)

Now what is so special about this story? Well, as Carol explained the rules, she used this word, torso. But, I, who was the only non-native English speaker in the group, did not understand what it means. So, I had to ask her what that means. She kindly explained it to me.

But, to be very honest with you, this kind of experience makes me so frustrated. Why don’t I know it? Why have I not studied this word till I am 35 years old? Asking these questions, I try to encourage myself to study more because asking these questions during meetings does not really help the flow of meetings. And.. I do not like that happens at all.

So, my friends! Good luck with your English! There are so many words that you would not expect to come up in many circumstances and, anytime that happens, you would feel a little embarrassed, if not a lot. Once again, you have to ask questions and be brave to speak out even with embarrassment.

P.S: Carol! If you think I explained the rules incorrectly, feel free to add comments. 🙂