Chapter 28
Back off I’m Starving!!

I had a presentation this morning, at 8am but my group wanted to meet before. So that means that I had to wake up at 6 freaking 40 in the morning! I could have died and would have actually preferred to. I didn’t sleep well last night. First off I kept hearing a noise that sounded like my bedroom door was opening and even though I turned around and saw no one these horrid images from scary movies popped in my head and I kept thinking, “This is exactly how it happens in scary movies! A false sense of security and then WHAM! You’re being slashed apart by a homicidal maniac!” Despite the Ted Bundy’s of the world I finally fell asleep, only to wake up panicked at 3:30! I was so scared that I had slept in! I barely heard my alarm this morning but I woke up on time.
So today I went to pick up my commencement tickets for graduation. The ticket office has successfully hoodwinked many of our university’s graduating students into foolishly believing that they open at 9am. Apparently they have decided to open at 9:30, this week only. So I sat down at a bench set aside under a stairwell like a secret garden with special wiring to achieve 4 sets of fluorescent lights hovering over a small tropical rainforest. The lighting and position of these plants (who probably want to be placed under a stairwell as much as I want to take a dip in a pool full of lava) makes me question the authenticity of these plants. So while no one is looking (and no one ever is looking for activity under a stairwell) I test the validity of the plants. Guess what? They are real, oh and some people actually look. But no one saw me in the act, just immediately after. So I froze into my position of staring back at them until they completely passed (If they can stare then so can I) and then I tossed the sample of plant that was hidden in my fingers to the ground.
Finally I was able to get tickets, of course the herd mentality from book buy back continues to getting your commencement tickets, except this time we were divided alphabetically (Do you remember when alphabetically was a hard word to spell? …digression). Then I received my tickets and continued in the cattle drive upstairs to wait half an hour for the room which had our caps and gowns enclosed to open up. Meanwhile I listened to a conversation behind me where a guy made an inaccurate assumption about girl’s basketball. And then I gave up on the hope that this conversation would have any interesting or saving value and ventured in the room 15 minutes prematurely. I ran into disappointment and detoured into a bathroom that I don’t think I have entered in almost 3 years! Still looks the same…no surprise there. I almost used my past employment skills to fix the paper towel dispenser (I used to be an early morning janitor on campus). However, I worried that someone would come in and wonder what the hell I was doing.
I went to sit back down and watch as the line grew but I absolutely refused to join the herd until the line started moving. No more stagnant lines damit! I refuse to be another cattle or sheep! But then I looked at the line again, it had doubled in size! “You have all day” I told myself, “and the line is not yet moving.” “Hold your ground! Hold your ground!”, “Wait until the arms and legs begin to swing.” Then the doors open and the line seemed to be swallowed up into the room very suddenly like poor innocent, unsuspecting matter gets sucked into a black hole or a vacuum. I finally get up and walked into the room and what do I see? Another line. I can’t just go out and wait for the line to die down, now I must stand there. Damn them!! Damn them all!! I rejoin my fellow cattle and I make a quick observation, while in line for the commencement tickets the line for A-K was the longest, and again, in the this line it was the longest. There are too many A-Ks on this campus. Then to top it all off they didn’t have my name, but this lady…she treated me real right, she fixed it all up. So everything is on for graduation! I have the tickets, I have the cap and gown and the best part of all…the tassel! That’s going to look hot hanging from my rearview mirror.
So today I am trying to fast for a girl at church who got into a really bad car accident. I am doing pretty well, I woke up saying, “don’t eat” and I went through most of the day like that. But this afternoon I was making treats for my English final tonight and without thinking I tossed in a morsel. It was just a small piece that fell off and I had to give it a home in my tummy. As soon as it was in my mouth I remembered that I wasn’t suppose to, but to avoid making a scene I just swallowed the little guy. It was so instinctive; no thought went into eating it or into stopping me from eating it. I’m no better than a hungry, cross-dressing Chris Farley.