Don’t drop the D-hall trays

Breeze Perspectives

The age of puberty, pimples and saliva-filled kisses has come to an end. College marks the dawn of a new era, promising volumes of knowledge, inspiring professors and lifelong friendships. Balancing Aristotle and pie charts with the "freshman 15" and an endless supply of red Solo cups is a time-managment act mastered during "the freshman experience." What the energetic staff of JMU’s Summer Orientation program failed to relate to their new peers was the underlying theme of the freshman year — the sheer awkwardness of life. The best example of this terrible awkwardness that pervades throughout every aspect of one’s first year is the D-hall dining experience.

Where is the best place to meet before lunch at D-hall? I have found the most popular meeting place is inside or outside the entrance way leading up those terribly steep D-hall stairs. What does a meeting time mean to the mass of impatient people? Would a hunger-stricken human take the chance of meeting their friend inside the vast circus of D-hall?

If your "friend" does decide to leave the foyer and meet you inside of the zoo, what are the chances of finding each other? Do you search in hunger amongst the sea of tables for your friend? Or should you get food and navigate slowly through backpacks and blondes painstakingly balancing that hellish black tray. Assuming, that is, you can find a table to eat at without asking the awkward, "Are you going to be done eating soon? Can I put my stuff down?" Be sure to bring a book or copy of The Breeze with you so that while you are eating alone you look studious — not stupid.

Waiting in line for grilled cheese takes long enough, and there is absolutely no time left to talk to the nice purple-shirted boy who sat behind you in last semester’s calculus class. Unfortunately, the overeager young man has all the time in the world to ask you a list of questions. The monotony has led me to suggest that JMU’s bookstore makes T-shirts saying, "My break was great, and I’m sure yours was, too." This boy doesn’t compare to the dreaded encounter with the recent drunken hook-up. Horror spreads throughout the body as the "Mike Ashby NJ" you know from your cell phone asks, "How was your weekend?" while standing in the salad line. Or, what if Mike doesn’t say anything at all and the two bodies that recently were entangled during a lusty stupor stand next to each other in absolute silence? Suddenly, the realization hits — you don’t want salad.

The most embarrassing D-hall dining experience occurs when balancing a tray becomes too much to handle. The awareness of one’s own nakedness in a sea of a gaping audience will forever be associated with the sound of a tray and its contents crashing to the ground. You must love the conveyor belt, for it is the final resting place of these dreaded devil trays.

Courtney Myers is a sophomore English major who doesn’t carry a tray.