lucyoncolorado

In which I have the worst morning ever...

I'm on a trip with my Physiology class. We are staying in a dorm room that looks similar to double berth sleeper cars on trains. Four of us are in one room, and when the beds are folded up, we have a table in the middle between us.

It's morning and I step into the bathroom to shower. I must share the space with two other girls. The walls of the bathroom are all windows so that people walking around outside can see inside. The way around this is to turn out the light inside the bathroom as this somehow turns off the windows. While I'm showering, one of the girls keeps flipping on the light. Each time, I tell her to turn it out again and she responds that it was an accident. She says it's just habit to turn on a light each time she walks past it. I finally give up and rush my shower, wrap my hair in a towl and wrap the other towel around my body and I walk back into the dorm area. I brush my teeth and hair here, still in my towel. My professor sees me, and he calls me over to him. He is standing behind a podium.

"Why must you walk around when you aren't properly dressed?"

I'm embarassed and don't want to explain the whole situation about the shower light so I pretend that I can't understand him. "What's that?"

"Why must you walk around when you aren't properly dressed?"

I cock my head to one side and pull my ear close. "I'm sorry, come again?"

"It's my accent isn't it?" he asks, earnestly. "Americans have trouble with my accent. I was worried that this might cause someone to struggle in my class." He seems honestly worried about this.

"No, it's not your accent at all. I can understand you perfectly and you are one of the best professors I've ever had." This is all true. "But I can't hear you right now because it's so loud in here." This part is a lie.

"I was asking why you are walking around in your towel. You should be more modest." I hate the word modest but I know he didn't mean it the way I took it. I looked down at my towel and feigned surprise.

"Oh really? This is less revealing than a bathing suit even, but if it is inappropriate for school then I'm sorry and I'll go change right now." I turned and ran back to my dorm room.

I made it just in time to catch the breakfast server. She explained that there were four items to choose from. Three were conventional breakfast items, but the fourth was a hamburger. I requested eggs, toast and coffee but the server explained that I must take the hamburger. She said that the four girls who share my dorm room had already ordered the other three items. I asked if this meant that the restaurant had run out of them all and now there were only hamburgers left. She clarified: Actually each person in a group of four must get a different item. There were still plent of eggs, coffee and toast at the restaurant, but since no one had taken the burger at my table and since the restaurant must serve all four items to each table, then I must take the burger. This didn't make any sense to me, so I told the server that I didn't want anything. I tried to leave the dorm at this time, but the server wouldn't let me leave until I confirmed that I would pay for the burger. I physically pushed my way past the woman, and my professor, still behind the podium, asked me again to approach him.

"Why are you fighting with the waitress?"

"I don't like burgers and I certainly don't want one first thing in the morning!"

I tried to explain the situation about the four items and how the server was forcing me to pay for a burger that I do not want, but my professor didn't see what was so strange about this. He thought I was making a big deal out of nothing.

Just then, a guy from my class entered the train. He was eating a breakfast taco from Torchy's. It looked wonderful so I asked him how he got it. He pointed me down an alleyway outside of the train and told me that there is a long line so I better hurry if I want to be back in time for lecture. We laughed about how stupid it was to require four people to get four different items regardless of what they wanted, and I felt really relieved to be talking to someone who agreed with me about this. We shared a laugh, and in the moment, I leaned forward and playfully slapped him on the shoulder in a gesture of friendship. He looked at me stunned and took several steps back.

"Oh god, I'm sorry. Did that hurt?" I was thinking to myself that he must be a real drama queen, but I wanted to smooth over the social situation. I leaned forward with my hands in the air, palms up, in a non-threatening gesture. "I'm really sorry. I was just laughing so hard that I must've invaded your personal space."

He faked a smile, but I noticed that he took a few more steps back. "It's OK," was all he said.

I was surprised at how weirdly he was taking being touched on the shoulder. "Are you hurt?" I asked again. He seemed so serious about it that I started to wonder if maybe he had a wound or something on his shoulder. I took a few steps toward him with real concern on my face this time.

He backed into a wall and started screaming, "Step back! Step back! People are watching you!" Many other students and my professor gathered around us. They all looked confusedly between me and him. I took several steps back and held my arms out again, palms up.

"She's trying to assault me!" the guy said. I tried to protest that this was ridiculous, but my professor intervened and said I needed to move along to give him some space.

I left the train, embarassed and fuming at the same time. I wondered if there was a camera on board that could've captured the whole thing. But pretty soon I stopped thinking about it because I found the line to Torchy's Tacos. The trailer is popular so it was crowded. I was waiting behind a dozen other people, but I wasn't in any hurry since I'd decided already not to return for the lecture.

A big middle aged man, clean shaven with blonde hair, stood in front of me. He turned around and looked toward my chest. At first I thought he was checking me out and this made me uncomfortable. But then he said, "What a beautiful baby girl!" I looked down and saw that I had baby M in my arms. How long had she been there? Had I been holding her during the scuffle with the guy in my class?

I was alarmed, but I looked at her carefully and she seemed perfectly fine. She was awake and happy, just looking around with her big blue eyes. The blonde man touched her face and cooed at her, but for some reason he really gave me the creeps. I politely shifted baby M from one shoulder to another. I was wondering where her parents, E and JG were. Did they know I have her?

Suddenly the blonde man started tickling me aggressively. He was acting like it was a game and the people around us were laughing, but I was having a lot of trouble holding on to baby M. Also I could barely breath enough to talk so I couldn't shout or ask for help. I fell over, with baby M still in my arms, and the man piled on top of me, tickling me. He was trying to steal away with the baby! I could see people's feet and it seemed that I was in the midst of a huge crowd. It was all very chaotic, with people pulling at one another and starting to trample us. I couldn't hold on to baby M much longer. A brunette woman wearing a striped sailor shirt offered to take the baby but somehow I realized that she was in cahoots with the blonde man. I was able to scream, "Watch them, they're trying to kidnap my baby!"

Then the blonde man and his accomplice became violent. They started pulling on my arms and punching other people in the crowd. I could sense the energy above me. It was like being on the tavern floor during an Old West fist fight. I was jostled about, and in the chaos, I felt baby M slip away. Finally, the energy calmed, and I stood up just in time to see the blonde man and brunette woman sprint away from the taco trailer. I looked around, panicked that I'd lost the baby.

Then I saw a big-busted mid-30s suburbanite woman with a nice haircut and fancy flip-flops that matched her capris, curled over herself in the corner of the room. Safely in her arms, she cradled baby M. She'd wrestled her from the kidnapping couple once I'd lost control of her. She handed her over to me gladly, and I told her how she'd saved the child's life. I was singing her praises and calling her a hero when the cops came. We told them the whole story, but they seemed alarmed that I was not the baby's mother in the first place. They wanted to know where E and JG were, but I couldn't tell them. They became suspicious of me and wanted to know what I was doing there. I explained about the class and the tacos, and they said they'd have to check up. I begged to let me have a taco first and they permitted it.

Finally, I got a migas and avocado taco with cilantro ranch salsa. At that moment, it seemed to be the best tasting food I'd ever had.

Back at the train, my professor verified what I was doing in this part of town but said he knew nothing about the baby. I explained what happened, but everyone looked at me suspiciously.

"With you," my professor said, "everything is always someone else's fault. But all morning long you've been getting in fights and causing scenes. Now you've really gotten yourself in trouble."

Somehow, I agree that he is right. I don't want to be that person that says that everything bad that happens to them is because of someone else. I must just be a royal screw up.