How to make friends

So, when you're at school 8 hours away from home, odds are you're a total loner. Our cafeteria here at NMU is called the Market Place(or MP), and while most kids here are, literally, drooling with anticipation to get their food, I'm usually freaking out. Why? Because not having a lot of friends means a LOT of sitting alone.

But the good news is, there is a plethora of other kids who are stuck with this horrible fate as well. And so it was decided: I am going to make friends by sitting with random people.

Out of the 5 billion times that I've sat down with random people, I made one friend whom I still talk to. The other 4,999,999,999 times, I just make the poor kids feel really, really uncomfortable, but I must give them props because they are super talented when it comes to hiding it.

So this actually happened a few days ago, but it was so funny that I just had to tell you about it:

After I prepared my own waffle, slightly deformed, drizzled it in the syrup we all secretly love to indulge in, and snagged one of those scrumptious muffins, I walked into the spirit room and sought out my victim.

OH MY GOD!!!!

For once, an extremely attractive young man was sitting all by himself, and I pounced on opportunity.

"Hey, are you sitting by yourself?" Said I.

"Oh yeah, you can sit here if you want." Said he.

"Wanna go get married? Right now?" Said no one. Unfortunately.

So I sat down and muttered something about being a freshman and not knowing anyone here, and just my luck, a girl I had met a few days before yelled "Oh, hey Mariel!" and like that, my cover was blown. I wasn't the pitiful loner girl anymore. He smiled, but I was dying. How was I supposed to win his heart if I couldn't receive his pity?

So I panicked and decided to improvise. Names will be changed to protect identity.

"Hey, Jessie! Wanna come sit with us?"

So she came over and we all introduced ourselves, and went through the typical list of things we all like to ask each other when we're meeting new people here: Which dorm are you in, what's your major, what class has got you up so early that you're at the MP at 7:30 in the morning, etc. When of course, our new friend, Gary, told us that he was studying pre-dentistry.

"Eww, that's... Well, I don't want to offend, but I have a lot against dentists, since one of them invented the electric chair. And can you IMAGINE what it would be like to have to constantly be looking in people's mouths? That's so gross! But if that's what you like, then that's cool." Said Jessie.

Followed by awkward silence.

Gary smiled at me (and I melted), and told me that the muffin I grabbed looked really good, and that he was going to go get one as well.

Needless to say, he never came back.

Opportunity abolished.