Down at the Watering Hole

Taking a good idea from Daniel (Michigan), I decided to include a picture in this post - if only for the glorious amounts of colors it adds. DISCLAIMER: This isn't my cafeteria. I think it's from Purdue. I found it using a Google Image Search. It's just there to get the idea across. And to give you a picture (if not an accurate one) of the setting.

And that's where I'll start. I bring you two stories, with only one thing in common - they took place at the cafeteria.
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the SETTING: Down at the Watering Hole
the CHARACTERS: Me, The Fourth Musketeer (so nicknamed because he was the last roomy in our apartment to move in), two former HS friends, and two mysterious older students, to our left
the PLOT: As it happened...

I wasn't prepared for this. I couldn't handle it. The fact was, I wasn't anticipating the chicken to be this big. I had filled up on bread and lemonade before the chicken was served, because I had remembered that I had gone home hungry the weekend I had visited UMD as a senior in HS. I was preparing to pack in the pre-meal so that the chicken would just be the topper. But I was already mostly full, and three-quarters of the chicken still sat on my plate, staring me in the eye, daring me to eat it. This was going to be a test of wills. The chicken had it's expansiveness, and I had my only two allies: and both were made of plastic. But no matter - I sawed away with my knife, and pinned the chicken to my paper plate with the fork. Gasping down bite after bite, determined not to give in. And that's when I heard it.

It floated into my ear, from the left. I wasn't sure if it was the Fourth Musketeer, or the people sitting next to him. "Your dad still doing OK?" It couldn't be the Fourth - that question wouldn't make sense from him. And it couldn't be directed at me - that question wouldn't make sense to me. I turned my head slowly, not trying to tip off mysterious students #s 1 and 2 that I was eavesdropping.

"Uh, I guess. Haven't talked to him for awhile."
"He's out of prison though, right?"

I dropped my fork, with a soft plastic clatter to the floor. That's not really the kind of thing you expect to hear while fighting a war with a chicken. (I suppose you don't really ever expect to fight a war with a chicken, either, but hey, we live in trying times.) I leaned down slowly to retrieve my fallen weapon, making sure not to miss anything from what was now the sole focus of my attention (the chicken had flown out of my mind, in the exact opposite way you'd expect a flightless - and cooked - bird to do).

"Ya, been out for a couple weeks now."
"He was in for six months, right?"
"Yeah."

At this point someone they knew (mysterious student #3) came over, and the conversation shifted. Needless to say I neither finished my chicken nor embellished this story in any way.
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Writing that story was too exhausting to write the second anecdote (which is quite different, but hopefully equally interesting) right now. As always, stay tuned...

(And just some food for thought - where does that story end up? What the hell are the details to it? That's just and odd thing to overhear.)