Today I got caught trying to walk out of Val with a bowl full of noodles and cup of Coke.
As I made my move into the tray-returning-station-hallway, one of the card swipers gave me the stinkeye. It was then that I first saw trouble brewing. The road ahead would be a rocky one.
I paused in the tray-returning-station-hallway to create the illusion that I was somehow busing my tray.
But I didn’t have a tray, and the card swiper knew it.
I walked out of there bowl in hand and in plain view, and not only had the card swiper been on to me all along, he had actually stepped outside of his booth in eager anticipation of taking me down, taking me all the way down, making me feel like the lowliest of the low.
“Hey!” he said.
I had no choice but to turn around and, to my chagrin, make eye contact.
“You can’t take that out of here!”
So what to do? I played it cool: “What?”
“Put it back. You can’t take the bowls.”
I mumbled something about my good intentions, finals, and returning it. I had played my hand. No deal.
“There are paper bowls by the stirfry, go put it in that.”
At least he didn’t object to me stealing food. And I was going to return that bowl. I think.
But the saga continues! I meander back into Val, trying to act like I just didn’t get served (that’s a piss-poor pun), and go looking for those paper bowls.
The alleged “paper bowls” are not actually there!
So now I’m getting desperate. I just want to make it out of there with my poached pasta. So I go and fumble with the paper environmental cups by the coffee, trying to juggle my brimming cup of iced Coke without spilling with the bowl and the cups and the fork. I go and sit down at the table right next to the swipers, and I make the switch, dropping only one lonely pasta on the ground in the process.
Then I walked out of there with my head held high, though my dignity had shrunk ten sizes.
That’s some hoodrat stuff.