A Little Off Kilter

It was a Thursday evening, and everyone seemed to be excited to for the weekend, but also very tired from a week’s worth of work.  I sat down at a table of food court and started working on homework.  Many people are coming to grab a last minute dinner, while others are here to study presumably so they can enjoy their weekend without having to do homework.  One girl comes down in her pajamas.  We’ll call her Pink.  She is tall and blonde, and is fairly skinny.  She sits down with her laptop, and her books.  Her hair is thrown up into a messy bun, and by the look on her face, she seems frustrated or angry.  She sets her head on the table until another student approaches.  She is a little shorter than the blonde, and has medium length brown hair.  Pink smiles when she sees her friend.  We’ll call her Siri.  Siri pulls out a calculator, and a math book.  Pink faces the laptop toward Siri, and WebAssign is pulled up.  The girls both work together on their math.  Pink stopped to take a phone call, and began to ignore Siri.  At this point, Siri packed up her stuff, smiled, waved and left.

At another table was a guy who had just sat down.  He wore an odd looking hat, and was short for a guy.  He looked to be about five foot three-ish, had dark hair, and hazel eyes.  We’ll call him Mr. Frustrated.  He looked over to me and smiled at me.  Being friendly, I smiled back.  He had gotten himself food and looked a little irked with whatever papers he was looking at.  He kept switching between the papers and his phone.  He wasn’t doing much other than getting angry at his work, so I moved onto someone else.

There was another boy who was here and had been here for the whole half hour that I’ve been here.  He had light brown hair, wore square glasses, and looked fairly skinny.  He had his hand in his hair.  I could see that he was on Facebook or Twitter by the reflection in his glasses.  He had books beside him, but did not seem particularly interested in studying at the moment.  He looked as if he was bothered or stressed about something.  His body looked pretty tense, and at some point, I saw him wiping his face with his sleeves.  I couldn’t help but wonder why he was hanging out here where people could see him if he was having a hard time.  If it was school that was bothering him, then it didn’t seem like he was very intent on fixing the problem as social networks looked like his primary focus.  I could only infer that it may have been more like someone who was bothering him rather than something bothering him.  After a while of watching this guy, Mr. Frustrated had approached my table and asked if he could sit with me.  I motioned for him to sit.  He engaged in conversation and talked about how he had an exam the following Thursday and did not understand any of the material.  We talked for a little bit before he decided he had to get back to his studying.  Overall, he seemed nice, a little too nice, but nice. 

As he went back to his table, I saw a girl approach him and hug him.  She glared at me for whatever reason, but I paid no attention to it.  I continued to watch the way she interacted with him.  She was very touchy with him, and from my peripheral vision, I could tell she kept glancing at me every now and then.  Mr. Frustrated seemed no longer frustrated at this point.  After staying there for about ten more minutes, he had packed up his stuff, and walked out with her hand in hand. 

It had been quite an unusual evening.  Nonetheless, I suppose the more interesting people come out later in the day.  I decided to call it a day after the guy who was trying really hard not to cry left.  I felt bad for the guy, but everyone has their burdens I suppose.