Anticlimactic

     Every fall the Illinois Music Education Association holds competitive auditions to play or sing in both district and statewide orchestra, most commonly known as IMEA auditions. So many kids travel with from their school to Bloomington Normal for their 10 minute audition. So many kids in a cafeteria waiting to audition. I don’t know if you can picture what a full cafeteria looks like since we barely have pathetic excuse for a kitchen, but trust me when I tell you it’s a lot of people. The auditions themselves are pretty nerve wracking, but that’s not what makes the auditions so bad. In my case, there are not a lot of people auditioning in the same voice as me, so I get my audition over with rather quickly. After my audition, I had to wait about 4 hours for everyone else to finish before we can head home. Luckily I didn’t have to wait alone since my good friend Matthew Tang also finished his audition pretty early.

     Matthew and I are starving, but we don’t want to get cafeteria food because it’s way too expensive. The price for one slice of Little Caesars Cheese Pizza was $2.50…not worth! Then Matty has the greatest idea “Why don’t we get food?” Obviously we both are down to get some food, so we look online to see what restaurants are around. We found two places; either a meatheads that’s 40 minutes away or an Arby’s that’s 10 minutes away. Meatheads sounds good in theory, but I didn’t want to walk for so long in formal attire. After a quick rundown of our options, we decided that Arbys was the best option since we couldn’t be sure how long we’d be out.

     We ventured out of Bloomington Normal High School en route to the local Arby’s. I had never been to Arby’s before, so I had no idea what to expect. From the way Matty described it, the restaurant sounded like somewhere between McDonalds and Wendy’s. What Matty failed to tell me was that Arby’s serves curly fries. Curly Fries! I love curly fries; they’re superior to normal French fries in both flavor and shape. The burger was meh, but the fries made up for the burger.

     Something I like to do with my food is save the best bite for last. As you can imagine my last bite was a nice crunchy yet juicy curly fry. Before I could savor that final moment with my scrumptious fry, that I really worked hard to get, some subbie came out of nowhere, took the fry right out of my fry holder, and ate it one bite. It’s not like he’s my pal or anything either, I literally had never talked to him, I don’t even know his name. I watched with agony as I couldn’t do anything. He probably saw the look of terror on my face and tried to redeem his action by saying “I’m a firm believer in the one rule, which means if I ask for one I deserve to get one.” All I could think was who does he think he is? He didn’t even ask, he just went right for the last fry with no warning. Maybe he’s ignorant, maybe he feels entitled, or maybe I’m just being really dramatic. Call me old fashioned, but if you spent the last of your money on a subpar meal that you traveled far to get I think you should get to enjoy it.

            We should’ve just gone to meatheads.