Write About Something While It's Happening

Tonight, while I wait to help work admission at the drag show upstairs, I have decided to embrace my friend Steph's idea for 30 Days of Blogging:

Write about something while it is happening

Welcome to my dinner in the university center.

I have chosen to eat at Subway tonight, as my options are limited here. I cannot at the Chick-fil-A because I don't hate myself, I've never eaten at the Asian Express because the food always looks greasy when other people order it, and I don't feel like Sbarro's or Petro's.

One of the boys at the table at two o'clock is chewing with his mouth so far open that I feel like I'm watching a carnival game where his friend has to try to pluck the half masticated food from the Jaws of Doom before the teeth come back down. Five bites wins you a teddy bear.

I'm currently chewing the Italian BMT and thinking about how it's not a Cold Cut Combo. I stopped ordering the Cold Cut Combo at this Subway because they keep leaving one of the meats off. When I point out that it's missing the staff tells me that "extra meat costs extra", and when I point out that it's not extra and that it says right on the sign that it should be there they just shrug and say that this is the way that they have been trained to make the sandwich. After having the same argument three times, I now just order the one that they know how to make correctly. My energy is better spent elsewhere.

The table at ten o'clock just got up and left. They left a cup behind.

A line of four girls just walked past, singing along to the overhead music in low voices, smiling. I smile, too, because they are clearly enjoying themselves and the smiles are infectious.

A boy at the table at eleven-fifty-five is wearing pants that are cartoonishly green. They are not lawn or moss or hedge green, but bright primary color green. Somehow he is making them work. I would look like a circus extra in these pants, although I have been known to wear hunter green pants on occasion.

And yes, those are totally shades of green. You should buy a J Crew catalog if you don't believe me.

I have finished my sandwich and am opening my Doritos. I'm not sure how to eat them and type without getting orange stuff on my screen, but I will figure it out.

I am wiping my fingers on a napkin after every chip.

Someone behind me just ordered two kinds of cheese on their sub. Extra cheese also costs extra.

The boy and girl at the nine o'clock table are carrying on a conversation in low voices while eating, not making eye contact. Both are texting every time I look up, their attention focused on their phones. I sometimes think about leaving the table when people that I am eating with do this.

A Dorito splintered weirdly in my mouth and poked me right behind my front teeth. It was painful for a second.

The crowd here has thinned out. A tanned employee with long, sun streaked hair is refilling the napkin dispensers. It occurs to me that the tan and streaks both may be fake, but from over here they look real. She is mouthing the words on the overhead music, but not actually singing.

A boy who was eating alone at a table between two and three o'clock is leaving. He stared into his food he entire time hat he ate, without a book or a phone or a computer or anything, and I wondered how people eating alone do that.

A girl over by Asian Express is fist-pumping along to Kelly Clarkson's stronger. She sees me looking and I up-nod her, smiling. She laughs and continues dancing, waiting in line with her friend.

I am out of Doritos. Dinner is over unless I get something else, but all I want is a milkshake and they only have them at Chick-fil-A, so I will go without.

Soon I will go upstairs and read while I wait for it to be time to report for duty.

In the meantime I will finish my soda and curate my social media on Facebook.