The Young and the Hungry

My freshman year of college, I went to the University of Houston.  I didn’t go there because I really wanted to go there, but more because I had gotten my application in late for Texas A&M University, and my only option was to go somewhere for a year and transfer.  This actually is a slight lie, as I could have gone to Texas A&M that year if I had joined the corp of cadets.  However, after hearing about the things they had to do, I decided that a year at another university was preferable.

That entire year at U of H, I brought my lunch every single day.  My girlfriend and I had different lunch schedules, so I generally ate alone.  It was somewhere around the second or third day on campus that I wandered into the satellite student center.  And there, set up just inside the door, was a gigantic TV.  In front of the TV, every seat, bench, and open floor space was occupied by a girl.  All ages, all colors, all cultural backgrounds had come together for one purpose…to watch the daily soap opera.

At first, I thought this was stupid, but it was cool inside, and I really didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I stayed.  Day after day, I found myself slowly getting sucked into the stupid storyline.  I started to need this hour every day, so I could find out what was going to happen next.  I swear that I was the only guy in there, but that didn’t seem to bother anyone.  I was eagerly accepted into the fold, and I was quickly entrenched in conversation with girls around me about who was going to date who next or which character was going to fall down an elevator shaft and never wake up from the coma.

It was a strange way to spend lunches during my freshman year, but surprisingly not as bad as I would have thought it would be.