College Stories #5

Food

So when I started going to college, I was eating out a lot and the new friends I was making would tell me about the dining halls. And even though I didn’t live at the dorms, I could still purchase a meal plan at the dining hall. After eating at the dining hall a couple of times, I figured purchasing a meal plan would be the most convenient and easiest thing for me to do. So I forget how I started talking to my parents about this; I was either printing out the paperwork from the printer in my parents bedroom, or I was probably just talking to my stepmom about it since she graduated from college after she married my dad and one day I ate at her college’s dining hall with her. Anyway, so my dad overhears me talking to my stepmom about my plans to purchase a meal plan at the dining hall as he’s getting dressed from getting out of the shower and I forget what he says to interject, but he starts raising his voice getting upset probably saying “what do you mean you’re going to purchase a meal plan” or something like that, and then shouts, “YOU’RE GOING TO BROWN BAG IT!” several times after I try to explain why it would be best for me to purchase a meal plan. And it wasn’t even like I was asking them for money. But since it was kind of expensive, I figured, you know what, yeah, I’ll “brown bag” it; I’ll practice some discipline and learn how to prepare my food. Like I said before, I never really liked the easy way because I knew the hard way made you stronger. In the end though, I was way too busy and ate out most of the time. And you know what, I actually totally forgot about this until one day, a third party harasser who was talking to my dad, probably a coworker, whispered “brown bag.”