Daily life can be a serious struggle sometimes. Not trying to be dramatic, but frequently throughout my day I find myself questioning my suitability for the average human’s society. It’s not even anything big at this point — it’s the small, everyday awkward moments that have me wondering if I’m alone in these struggles or if other people are secretly going through them too and just not owning up to it. A mere sampling of some of these moments:
The acorn area
Picture this. You’re walking to class, minding your own business, thinking about what you’re going to have for lunch, when all of a sudden you get pelted by acorns falling from the sky. The worst acorn area is right outside the E-School in front of Thornton. I’ve learned to speed-walk as fast as possible in order to avoid those aggressive little acorns, and whatever I do, I don’t look up. That would expose my eyes to the acorns and we definitely don’t want them as a potential target.
Then of course, there’s also the issue of stepping on the fallen acorns and rolling over them while awkwardly trying to regain balance. So really, it’s a lose-lose situation and I hope it’s not just me, but I feel like I never see other people shielding their eyes.
The panic stance at a crosswalk
It’s that moment when you’re not quite sure whether the car coming towards you is going to stop or just plow on through the crosswalk, so you have to awkwardly hesitate between standing and walking. You can’t fully commit to either, because if you just stand there and stare at them and they turn out to be stopping, then you look super annoying, like, “Oh, I’m not sure if you being a solid 15 feet away from me is enough room for me to cross the street, can you please back up a little?” But then, if you do start walking and they’re not stopping, well, clearly no one wants that outcome either. Hence, the panic stance.
The mini-desk dilemma
This one I’m pretty sure affects other people too, but who knows, maybe everyone else just handles it better than I do. Anyways, you walk into class, you’re already late so you’re scanning the lecture hall trying to find a seat when you realize the only available one is in the most inconvenient place possible.
You start to panic — the only option is to basically climb over at least three people to get to the only open seat, and they have their mini-desks set up already. I’ve gone through too many awkward squeeze-bys to keep trying this one. At this point I just take the L and sit on the floor at the back. It simply causes too much confusion for everyone to band together and lower their desks enough for one average-sized person to sideways shuffle through.
The building and/or class mix-up
This one is a classic. There are two ways it can go — either you mistakenly think it’s a Thursday when it’s really a Wednesday, so you go about your schedule accordingly. You make it to your building for class, enter the room and realize you recognize zero people there. You then realize you’re in the wrong class, because — ha! — it’s Wednesday. You quickly turn and pretend like you meant to do that. For all the other students know you could have left your water bottle and come back to look for it, right?!
The other way it could go — you aren’t the kind to mess up your calendar days, you know it’s a Wednesday and you’re in the right classroom for the correctly scheduled class. However, you can’t remember which building you’re in. You just know the location and what time on what day that you have to be there. I still don’t know all my class buildings by name, just as “that one behind that random parking lot.” I’m left trying to explain to my friends where to pick me up after class like: Which parking lot?? I don’t know, just — that one with the weird tree — you know?
The moral of the story is that there’s most likely at least one other person going through whatever daily struggles you are. Life would be a whole lot easier if we all just recognized these little flaws, laughed them off and went about our day. Will that happen? Probably not.
Oh well, just remember folks, if you see someone slide on an acorn outside E-School — it’s probably me and I would greatly appreciate it if you could at least pretend to slide too.
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