The Free Peach

Earlier this afternoon in Cafe 3, I was trying to pretend to enjoy my pasta with lentil bolognese. My comfort of solitude was accompanied by a peaceful, poignant Youtube video where Eddy Burback and Ted Danson go to every Margaritaville in the US and Canada. If I tried hard enough, I could imagine the Margaritaville hotel and casino, smell the salt water and the Katy Mills mall in Texas… until the worst thing that could happen to me in the dining hall happened: my friend came over to my table and attempted to initiate conversation.

“Can I eat with you?” The five dreaded words I never wanted to hear – because today was Youtube Lunch Day, the time each week when, for thirty sweet, mindless minutes, I can forget that I have no idea what a “data structure” was, or why my homework is asking me to “iterate over a list of booleans.” Instead, I can watch Dan and Phil play Poppy’s Playtime, or begin watching an 8-hour video essay about the secrets of iCarly. I can unsuccessfully attempt to complete the Crash Course Philosophy playlist for the fifth time in my life. Hell, I can watch vine compilations. The possibilities are endless, thanks to Youtube, Berkeley-Visitor Wifi, and my perfected practice of glaring at all the freshman twerps who dared to sit next to me.

But today, this joyous reprieve would be snubbed, and my plight had just begun. I couldn’t just say no to someone I had a social connection with, especially when those connections aren’t numerous to begin with. I would just have to man up, ask, “What classes are you taking again?” and suffer through the call-and-response some humans would call “a friendly conversation.” I tried to remind myself that this was a good friend of mine, who I hadn’t seen in a while, and who I did genuinely want to catch up with. But some other part of me begged for solitude and a brain shutdown with a Disney fails compilation. It had been two weeks since the last time I watched Harry Potter Puppet Pals. Couldn’t my friend see I was suffering?

I bet something can be said about my aversion to social interaction today, seeing as the only other time I had opened my mouth to speak this afternoon was to ask the girl next to me in lecture if I could borrow a pencil. In fact, I bet something really can be said about the entire student body eating alone with headphones connected to a device, as if the idea of eating without drowning out our thoughts is like the plague. Or further, the idea that we can’t sit through one lecture without getting distracted by a notification, and that we need music or a podcast blasting in our ears to survive the 10 minute walk to campus. But honestly – I’m too fucking tired to debunk that. Maybe I’ll watch a video essay about it!