Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Moving trays in the cafeteria

This is a quick story about a funny thing that happened in college. It's strange how I hadn't thought about this in years. But something happened in our company cafeteria that reminded me of this and I wanted to write it down before I forget it again.

One of my best friends, Nick, and his girlfriend, Andrea (they are married now), were sitting with me in the cafeteria in college.  I think we were finished eating and were just sitting around talking. A friend of Andrea's came in with a friend of hers and they put their trays down near us and then buzzed off to chat with other people. I forget Andrea's friend's name but Nick and I knew her, too. She was a very nice person but always seemed to be on the run. She was very friendly, too, so we weren't surprised that she had a lot of people to talk with. But why not sit near them instead of us? She could see we were close to leaving. But who knows what goes on inside people's heads?

I think we decided to stay a little longer in case Andrea's friend came back. She might have wanted to talk with Andrea, too. But they didn't come back. We wondered about their food getting cold. Then we saw them flitting from table to table to talk with other people. So, then we wondered what would happen if they forgot where they left their trays. Nick and I looked at each other and immediately had the same idea. We moved the girls' trays to the next table. Not far away (maybe five or six feet) but not at the same table. We figured they'd see that we had moved them and probably playfully argue with us about doing it.

They finally came back to where their trays had been. They didn't see them, of course, but didn't just look in the immediate area. I guess they assumed they'd really forgotten where they had put them down. So, they headed off looking for their trays. We saw them backtracking their movements around the tables they had visited. After they'd left our area, Nick and I moved the trays back to their original place.

We had a great time watching them walk all over the cafeteria and wondered how long it would take them to get back to us. Finally, after a long time, they came back and finally saw their trays. The looks on their faces were priceless. They really couldn't seem to understand what had happened. Had they hallucinated the first time? Had they gone to the wrong place the first time and somehow, even though it looked familiar, finally found the right place? Then they looked over and saw us grinning. To their credit, they laughed about it and we all enjoyed the prank. I hope their food wasn't too cold. If I was a gentleman, I would have offered to get them new food. But then, I'm not much of a gentleman, am I?

2 comments:

Fire-Cat said...

Was that Snow White? If that is Snow White, She would be the cook!

JED said...

Even the cook has to eat sometime.