12th April 2011

Post with 7 notes

God and Pizza

You see, at dining halls, I am that girl.

No, not that “that girl,” the one who is too inebriated to get herself home, throws up all over everything, and lands herself in precariously dangerous situations weekend after weekend but gets by scot-free because so many people grudgingly take care of her each time. I am not the medically stupid daredevil, if you will.

Nope; I’m the one who consistently overestimates my eating capacity (“I could eat a hyena!” - Simba). I fill six plates and end up eating quarter-sized portions from each menu item. And this sacrilegious mealtime ritual still amasses the greater part of 90 minutes at the least. 

People only put up with this because watching me eat and adding exasperated soundtracks to my pathetic speed beats the alternative; usually, Mastering Physics. Or they’re trying to get in my pants later. But the venue for the latter situation is generally not a dining hall.

< (Assertion of relative classiness).

In any case, everyone knows that dining halls require you to clean up after yourself. Or else the sheer number of busboys per university would gut out the California state budget further. 

But how does one manage that when she has six such plates, full of food, to clean up EVERY TIME? I’ll tell you how—magic. Freshman year, I did it right every time, every day multiple times, for almost seven months.

It’s simple; pick up your plates, take it to the dishroom. You do not need to be a college student to figure this out. I probably had the mental capabilities of performing this task before I had the mental capabilities required of eating itself (which, unsurprisingly, came to me very late in life).

But then spring fever seeped into my soul. I began to do everything wrong. I lost my keys twice in a month. Lost my ID countless other times. Slept through classes and shopped online a lot with random leftover graduation money (remember, I was still young, and had left the protective cradle of high school just a few months prior).

April 15, 2010 is where it all went wrong.

(I would remember the date).

I had fewer plates than usual. I was carrying back a bowl of cereal (finished! triumph), a plate of peas and corn and chicken (chicken unfinished), a plate with remnants of marinara sauce (pesto’s better imo), and a plate with a singularly-bitten slice of pizza.

That last one was the bad apple.

Oh, and probably a half-empty glass as well. (… psychoanalysis of this seemingly nonchalant statement reveals that I am indeed a pessimist).

And on my way out, while I carried all that shit in my two rather large hands (yes, let’s compare), a disaster happened. The pizza slid off the plate and gently snowboarded down the slope of somebody’s chair… onto his back.

I blinked twice and held my breath. What would he do? Would he sock me in the gut? Pick the slice off his body and slap me across the cheeks with it? Shank my face?

… he didn’t notice.

The person engaged in conversation with him did not even appear to notice.

And I sure as hell wasn’t going to lurk around Cafe 3 to see if anyone else had noticed! I bounced, praying he would just get up and leave and let it fall off, completely oblivious to the fact that there was a 7-ounce triangle of breaded cheesy goodness on his shirt. Couldn’t he feel the heat? Oily wetness? Idiot.

The trip to the dishroom went otherwise uneventfully, thank god, but the image of this man has never exited my brain. What should I have done, in retrospect? There was no way I could just tell him and risk his fury and wrath. And I probably couldn’t have reached into the seat and picked it off him gingerly and discreetly without his friend detecting something inappropriate. (Imagine what that would have looked like).

Shady business.

I suppose I could have sneakily tapped his shoulder and said, “Uh, sir, are you aware there is a slice of pizza on you? Some asshole must have dropped it on you in passing.”

But that could trigger the subconscious memory of an idle spectator: “Oh hold up, wasn’t that you? I totally saw that. Just didn’t register it as a DICK MOVE because normal people carefully babysit their slices of pizza when walking to the dishroom.” Or eat them to avoid guilt from orphans in Nigeria.

:(

So I think peace-ing out was the best solution to the dilemma at hand. At least I emerged with my face unshanked, and the only real cost to him was a load of laundry which I’d hope he would do anyway. And probably mild emotional trauma upon discovery.

Take a moment to imagine that.

Optimistically speaking, he may have regarded it as a gift from the heavens!