"Pork, Chicken, Watermelon and Cool Aid for Everyone"
We have all seen the stereotypical black person on Comedy Central, holding a bucket of KFC in one arm and a big old watermelon in the other. What we don’t realize at though, is that stereotypical black guy on Comedy Central is (in actuality) not that far off from the real thing. This is a story about “Chicken Nights” in the cafeteria. Just for your information today, coincidently today happens to be civil rights day.
*Note this blog is not intended in any way shape or form in any to be racist or bias*
Once a week down at the cafeteria Sodexo (our food service provider) holds soul food day. Soul food down here means in a literal sense Black food day. On these “special days” the break down of the food offered goes a little something like this.
Sunday dinner, and boy was I actually hungry for once, skipping breakfast or actually sleeping through breakfast, as I normally do on Sundays, I hadn’t eaten anything since Saturday diner. I handed (by now after three semesters worn down) id card to the lunch lady, and proceeded into the already packed cafeteria. A cafeteria with bad food packed ten minutes after opening can only mean one thing,….. Soul food day.
Looking around the miscellaneous lines pondering what to eat, to my left Fried Chicken, Pork, or Chit lens. To my right OX hooves, Chicken legs and the all exclusive watermelon table. Ever have the feeling you just don’t fit in, and everybody is watching you to see what you end up taking back to your seat? Yeah well, skipping right passed the overcrowded hot food lines consisting mainly of hundreds of fried chicken crazed brothers pushing and shoving for that last gizzard, and proceeding right to the watermelon and desert lines I hear in the background “Cracker boy what’ya eat’n night?...”White boy gotto love the corn bread.” Mostly good nature puns that don’t mean much anymore as there are only so many insults out there for white people and I think I have heard them all now.
Sitting down with my heaping plate of dry cake and watermelon I choose an open seat fairly secluded from the rest of the student body and try to pound down the world’s driest cake. Once and a while a young girl will walk past “Hi how you doin” or “where you from” they’ll say” …..”Fine Wisconsin. Ill answer which is normally followed by sometime of question ….”Wow how did you end up here”… I choose one of many prewritten responses I have developed in response to that very question. “NAVY, NASA, STEM” something along those matters. Did I mention during this time 300 sets of wondering southern eyes find there way to my table with a look of either confusion or astonishment. Upon taking my empty plates up to the kitchen and walking out the doors my body finds itself glad to have made it our alive. There are these great Bugs bunny Cartoons where bugs asks Elmer if he ever had the feeling he was bein watched? And Elmer looks at camera with a scared face and runs away screaming.
“Presumably back to his house where he puts his nose inside his calculus book and studies the rest of the night”.
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