#4- The Scariest Place on Earth

I had once read somewhere that if you were a new student, you were supposed to find someone, anyone to latch onto as you walk to lunch. By default, if you go, "oh, wait, where/how does lunch work?", they'll feel compelled to ask you to eat with them because they feel bad for you. Not that I'm into pitying people into friendship, but hey, I was new. I choose Felicia to walk with.

Unfortunately, we were so deep into conversation about our science class, I forgot to try to play the pity card, and when we did get to the cafeteria, I lost track of her. My arms full of books, I set them down on a table and sat down. I just kinda stared around. Assistant principals leered around at me, and I assumed that meant they released us by table. In middle schools, having attended four, I would know the different styles of cafeteria management. There's where you sit at a table, and they release you to go get lunch. There's the style where you can go up by yourself and get food when you're ready. There's where you're forced to get into line to get into the cafeteria. This was the "go get food when you're ready" way, and I had no way of knowing. I sat alone at a table, with all my stuff for a while, then realized the steady stream of people just randomly getting up and going to the lines. I felt like an idiot. I still didn't recognize anyone, and just got in some sort of line.

There's a whole other science to how they serve the food too. You can be forced to get into a general serving line, and have to work down the lines until you get what you want. You might have a bunch of different lines with different foods. Sometimes, you even lack choice on what you have to eat, and they just shovel you whatever crap they can find. Cedar Oaks, unknown to me, had multiple lines. I lucked out however. I found Felicia.

"Danny!" she called, over the roar of almost 200 other eighth graders scarfing down food. I cut a bunch of scary looking football players, all of whom gave me a simply poisonous look, to stand in line with Felicia.

"So, uh, are you in band or anything?" I asked.

"Nah, orchestra." she replied, just looking around at other people.

"Oh, cool."

"Yeah, I guess."

"So, what's for lunch?"

"This is the pizza line."

"Oh, okay. So each line is different?"

"Yeah."

The conversation continued such as that for a while, single questions, not much reciprocation. Finally, as we got closer to the front of the line, I noticed the disgusting amount of ketchup that most of the people came off the lines and put all over their nasty wet-looking french fries. Ew.

I looked at Felicia. "So, do you do dance or anything?"

"Yeah, I do."

"But can you do the robot?"

"What?"

So then, like any logical person trying to make a great impression, starting doing the robot on the pizza lunch line on my first day at a new school. And when I say doing the robot, I don't mean like, well. I'm so white, I'm lucky I don't glow. Regardless of the amazing randomness of the situation, Felicia laughed. A lot.

I was doing the robot, fool.