My Friends Are Awesome

Continuing on in telling random stories from my past triggered by reading old stuff I wrote, and to counterbalance the "my friends suck" theme from a lot of my recent posts...

At my undergrad, one place we liked to congregate was the dining hall. It was guaranteed that if you walked in between 12:00 and 1:00 the middle of the dining hall would be completely full of black students.

One afternoon, probably during the latter half of the semester and close to finals, I found myself hanging out in the dining hall during an off peak time, between lunch and dinner. It seemed like people I knew kept strolling through and sitting down to talk.

At some point, I found myself at a table with a bunch of people. Some I knew well, some I didn't know well at all. One of the people I didn't know well at all was a girl named Erica. Erica and I had a bunch of mutual friends, but her personality was just a little too much for me to want to incorporate into my daily life.

Eventually, the table cleared out and left myself, Erica and another male friend of mine. At a table next to me were some other people I knew and so I carried on a conversation with them until they left.

When I turned my attention back to my own table, Erica and my friend were mid conversation. For most of the time, Erica kept her head buried in her arms on the table. Occasionally she would look up at my friend, but she never looked at me.

When an opening in the conversation occurred, I took the opportunity to speak to her. What I said, exactly, escapes me now, but I'm sure it was something like "hello."

She lit into me. She started yelling about how she was sick and she didn't want people to talking to her. She yelled specifically at me claiming she had said she was sick and I purposefully ignored that.

I was...well...shocked. I had never experienced anything so suddenly like that. I'd had people lose their minds on me, but never someone I didn't know well, never unprovoked and never so publicly.

I sat there for a moment -- my guy friend and I had the same surprised look on our faces. I gathered my things and left the table.


Later in the day, I was at dinner with some of my closest friends and I relayed the day's bizarre events. One of my friends questioned me extensively about the situation. What, when, where, why... all of that. We all agreed that it was completely ridiculous that someone who didn't want to be bothered by others would camp out in one of the busiest spots on campus. It felt good to vent about the situation and we all went on with our dinner.

The next day, the friend who'd been so inquisitive told me that she and a few others had found Erica later that night and cornered her about the days events. She told me that initially Erica denied that it had happened. She even went so far as to initially deny being in the dining hall that day. Eventually, though, she admitted that she had blown up at me, but she claimed that it wasn't unprovoked.

My friends wouldn't tell me exactly what they said to her -- but they told me she apologized and though I stuck to my vow to never speak to her again, I noted she tried her best to be courteous whenever I was around.

Ahhhh.... it always feels good to have people who have your back.