Failure to Communicate

On our first teacher workday of the year, we had an icebreaker activity.  The staff wanted a chance to catch up across departmental lines and so they did the old draw-numbers-out-of-the-hat.  The idea being to get random groups together to talk about their summers before the school year inevitably separate us into departments again.

I drew 25, which I signalled to the room at large with my fingers as in the istock photo on the left.  Of course, my good friend Paul who also teaches physics, shares 3 classrooms with me and has a desk next to mine in the science office also drew 25 and came right over.  We scanned the room looking for some more group members and saw someone waving to us from across the room.  He flashed the same sign and insisted we join him.  So we worked our way across the room and said "you guys are 25 too?" and they looked at me like I was crazy and said "No, we're group seven".