The UMC food court is an unfriendly place for eavesdroppers. It’s hard to pick up a particular sound wave when one is in an ocean of voices. The conversations are sporadic and they constantly change in intensity; they build into crescendo’s and then fall into silence.
Of the 42 people whose faces I can clearly view, 39 of them would mark ‘Caucasian’ on a census survey. Despite this fact, they speak very few words of English. Here, at the food court, the local population speaks a nonsensical language in which they carelessly throw in a couple of English fragments such as “ I wanted to” and “Craig was called.”
If everyone were to leave the room, it would be much colder; that’s asking a lot though, those 42 people I mentioned make up about 1/6 of the room’s occupancy. It is probably around 20 yards shorter than a football field and ten yards less wide.
The tables and chairs form a pattern of number and color; there are mostly four or five old, small, wooden chairs with red seats for every gray tabletop with a black metal base. If only the people would behave and fill up these tables, the pattern would be complete. There wouldn’t be this cluster of chairs sprawled about; the labyrinth would still be there, but there wouldn’t be as many dead ends. But the people pull chairs from now odd tables and clamor together with their friends. Others can’t find tables, not only because of the large crowd, but also because they consider tables with one occupied seat to be taken; the other open seats become useless.
The carpet complements the blur of sound. It looks like one of those skewed pictures you stare at that are supposed to have a hidden image. It is a mirage of colors: blue, purple, orange, green, but mostly gray.
The smell is the usual, that of air. The kind where you can take a deep inhale, and though your surrounded by what your sure is many smells (I am 40 feet away from at least three restaurants), your not sure there are any scents present. Maybe it’s the smell of warmth?
I try my best to follow the path of a conversation taking place at the table next to me. There are two girls who appear to be around 19 or 20. One girl has streaks of blonde highlights throughout her brunette hair; she is wearing a thin, gray sweater button up. She must have bought this sweater for the sake of style, because it’s not keeping her warm. The other girl is wearing a real sweater, a red one, and she has not yet decided to put highlights in her brown hair. Unlike her friend, she is a bit chubby.
“Oh atheists,” I hear highlights say in a jubilant way. Though it is hard to follow the conversation, I gather that she is telling her friend about a debate she had on religion with a man who “took himself way too seriously.” “It’s not even his opinion, he puts it down for other people,” she says, still laughing. I never find out whether she took a religious or secular stand on the issue, that doesn’t seem to be the angle of her story. The angle seems to be the absurd arrogance of this man’s argument. This arrogance made the girl feel that any reasoning with this man would be useless. She concludes her story by sharing the new perspective she would take if she were to ever debate this man again; “So now I just want to say all these stupid comments, just to be petty and immature.”
