Feeling: antisocial
Listening to: electronic office buzz
Reading/Watching: studying for Anthropology test

We must discuss the phenomenon of the Cafeteria Pity Lunch.

When I was a shy freshman, I took my food from the caf and ran, hoping to avoid the humiliation of the Pity Lunch. As a sophomore, I brought books to dinner with me, to announce with the prominently displayed dust jacket that I was quite busy, and not at all looking for company, thank you. Junior year I'd made enough friends to actually have someone to eat with, or else I'd walk back to the music department to eat at the big round table with the other slackers who sat around playing dominos and never practised their instruments.

The Pity Lunch is what happens when you get your food, sit quietly at an empty table by yourself, and begin to eat. A well-meaning socialite who suffers from an overabundance of charity (or is secretly trying to avoid sitting alone like the loser you truly must be to not have a munch-buddy), pretends to care deeply for your lonely plight, and sits down next to you. You didn't ask them to, you didn't really want them to, but they are trying to be a nice person, and suddenly your comfy alone-time is violated.

Small-talk ensues. You discuss your major, your favorite teacher, what dorm you live in. You mention how putrid the food is, while you eat it anyway. You talk about the weather: the heat, the cold, the rain, the dust, the mud, whatever. With each inane sentence, part of you dies inside, and you vow to become an anorexic if it means you never again have to suffer the mindless social boredom of the Pity Lunch.

It has been years since I fell victim to the Pity Lunch. Then, today, I sat in a table by myself, eating my sandwich because the choir girls decided to go give blood during their lunch break, and it happened. She was brunette, and cute, and very obviously nice, but I was unusually somber, and therefore unwilling to break out of my crappy mood. I also really, really suck at small-talk, and she apparently didn't know how to throw something funky into the conversation to make it less conventional, so our fifteen minutes of stilted exchange was quite painful.

I have been Pity Lunched. It is officially time to buy a blow-up doll and keep it in my backpack to ward off any future occasions.

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