Is Anyone Sitting There?

Philip and I went to prom earlier this week, as Philip mentioned in his earlier post. I was a little nervous about going to prom—being only a sophomore, I hardly knew anyone there. Even worse, I half knew a lot of people in that awkward "you're in my photo class but I've never talked to you before" kind of way. So it was just a stew of awkwardness at first. Possibly one of the worst set ups was the tables—the prom was held in a giant ballroom with lots of tables in the middle, circular tables with ten chairs each. I guess if you're going to arrange tables this is the way to do it—there was certainly no way to have everyone sit at the same table. But it made for an awkward time of trying to find the people one knows and gather around the same table.

Philip and I wandered around, looking for a friend of his we had seen earlier, but to no avail. We couldn't find her anywhere! We wove in and out of tables, like vultures circling over prey. We got some weird stares. I felt more than a little awkward. "Maybe we can find some other person to sit with?" I ventured, after our third round of hovering and circling tables. Philip agreed, and soon we spotted another one of his friends, a tall curly haired boy. We attempted to greet him and follow him to his table, only to lose track of him. Shoot! "How did we lose him?" I asked Philip. "He's really tall and distinct." Philip had no clue either, but it was back to table hunting for the moment.

We eventually spotted a table with two open seats left that was populated by a group Philip was familiar with. So we sat down and started talking, when the person next to Philip said, "I think these seats are saved for ___ and ___" (I don't remember their names at all.) And it was back to table searching again!

By that time all I wanted to do was find some table that wasn't going to mind if we sat down there, regardless of how friendly we were with them. Anything but the awkward table circling rounds that we were making would be wonderful. Finally, Philip spotted another table, with several open spots. "Can we sit here?" He asked. "If you can find a chair!" They responded, and we noticed that another table had stolen some of the chairs and silverware from our table so that they could fit more than ten people at their table. Well, I thought, one brief moment of awkward chair stealing would be better than more circling, so I stole the chair from another table, and the silverware, too. Success! This would be our refuge from the dance floor and everything else for the rest of the night. We sat down and that ended the long loops of awkward table searching.


Sachi