Pain v. the Pixel [9.8.08]

It is now 6:09 PM. The meeting just ended, and my friends and I have night class in twenty-one minutes. My one friend now takes this pivotally terrible moment to share the fact that she has not gotten around to eating dinner yet. Walking toward the UG, our assignment is clear: get in, get food, get out. The assumption is that our friend would take the easy way out and eat on the way to our class. Unfortunately, our friend instantly refuses to eat on the go, and we are left with no option but to find patience within ourselves and wait. However, due to the immense emphasis on our lack of time, the rest of us collectively decided to keep our friend on track. Subconsciously, we gave synchronized signals, forcing the situation to become stressful. We repetitively used phrases such as "chew faster" or "hurry up" or my personal favorite "come on already". Perhaps the most entertaining aspect of the event was anticipating her reaction to the outside pressures, which apparently included inhaling her dinner in six minutes flat. I knew that she would start eating at a quicker pace, but I never predicted how absurd the intake speed would become. Her meal became a systematic performance: dip, chomp, sip, dip, chomp, sip. When she came up for air, she laughingly mentioned her chances of schooling "that Asian hot dog eater" in an eating contest. Being quite the storyteller, she would not embrace a moment of silence, but instead persisted on dominating the conversation. Her usual line, "this one time at camp", was often incoherent due to the extensive amount of food in her mouth, but her persistence and mumbling continued amid our laughter. I found myself taking pictures of her in mid chew, or shall I say mid chomp? Minutes later we were on our way, and our friend was already regretting her swift smorgasbord. She blamed it on the heartburn, but I continued to wonder...was that truly the case? Or was it because I caught an unsightly snapshot of her with my camera phone? And if that was the reason, one should weigh the options and decide which one is indeed worse. The temporary physical pain of too much food, too little time? Or could it be the permanence of the pixel? The world may never know.