It’s mealtime on the UBC campus. You are a blissfully ignorant first-year student, breathless with anticipation as you make a right turn then another right turn, fatefully arriving in the Commons Block at a doorway marked Dining Room.
Vaguely, you recall that halcyon first day on campus when your parents crammed wonderful food into your fridge before they bid farewell. Now that food is gone, some sacrificially scattered on your carpet – like the box of Ritz crackers you knocked over reaching for your biology text. Then there was the apple stuck in the top of your fridge, freezing so hard you nearly broke your tooth on it. Much of the parental food of the snack variety was devoured in a mad frenzy, sharing it with buddies after an anxiety-induced rant about Chemistry. That’s right, the food is gone and your rumbling bowels must be satisfied, so you follow your nose through the cafeteria door.
Once inside, a smorgasbord of choices awaits. Turning to the left you arrive at a fruit bar. You adventurously swirl a spoon around in the yogurt and are about to reach for a bowl when you notice bean sprouts bravely poking their heads above the white surface. You hesitate then decide to not indulge in sprout-flavoured yogurt. On the right side of the vast cafeteria you find the salad bar, but the neon colours of the salad dressing is alarming and so once again, you retreat.
Spread out like a battlefield front and centre is the main food bar, where a long line of males nervously clutches slips of paper declaring wildly varying food choices, ranging from burgers to cheeseburgers. Like the living dead they stare blankly and shift from one foot to the other, watching the beef simmer on the grill. You decide not to participate in this grim conflict with cholesterol and move on.
Here, you encounter a Wrap Stand that reminds you of familiar fast food store except the line is longer and slower. The customers at the stand consist of boys who decided the burger line up was too long and girls eager to avoid gaining the “freshman 15.”
In quiet desperation you scout the flanks of the cafeteria, noting the ethnic food choices, including Greek and Indonesian, which you decline after recalling last week’s unfortunate incident with the unpronounceable dish marked with 1 red pepper symbol when it was really a 5.
At the drinks aisle you are surrounded with tantalizing options. Girls conscious of their jean size delicately reach for “Arizona Green Tea with Antioxidants”. Sick, bedraggled looking students opt for the “Vitamin C Vitamin Water” and its hope for a cure. There are the earthy types in North Face jackets and hemp jewellery that lunge athletically for bottles of turbid green Mango Chutney Wheat Grass Extract. Other patrons dash madly past you, grabbing whatever drink is available to accompany oblong piles of bagels and cream cheese crammed into brown paper bags.
After making your choices you proudly march to the cashier, confidently swiping your card before heading to the seating area. Once there you discover flocks of young females grazing on leaves of iceberg lettuce flavoured with a few drops of low fat salad dressing, sipping ice water between bites. Beside them a table of disheveled students with clothes still unchanged from the prior night of partying nurse their coffee and wait for the pain to subside. They are in stark contrast to the perky crowd of pre-med students at the next table, the food on their trays obsessively arranged according to caloric density and glycemic factor.
Finally, you find a table of calm relatively normal people and settle in for your meal. Proud of your newfound independence you rush back to your dorm room after the meal for some heavy studying.
But something gnaws at you and you can’t concentrate. Oh my god, it’s 7 p.m. and you’re hungry again! Then the self doubting “if-only’s” start: if only you’d bought the lumberjack meal plan, if only you could stop thinking about Jelly Belly’s and Oreos, if only you felt more passionate about Chemistry and most painfully, if only you hadn’t left home. Home? Ridiculous! Home is for wimps. A strong, mature, independant university student like you doesn’t need the convenience of a fully stocked stainless steel mega fridge. Of course you don’t!
Self-control, you must exercise self-control. But as you stare numbly at the Periodic Table, something incredible happens. Against your will, your hand uncontrollably moves from the book, picks up the cell phone and dials ten familiar digits. You hear the ringing, anxiously listening for the familiar voice. Incredibly, you start to speak and the words spill out of your mouth as if a demon has taken over your body.
“Hi, Mom?” you say. “ I was, uh wondering, when are you coming to visit again? So soon? Wow. Do you think maybe you could bring some more food? Really? Get a pen and paper mom, cause I’ve got this list.”
