Subway Adventures.

Today I had worship team training at church from 10am-4pm. And let me just say, the series of unfortunate events that happened at my lunch break had Kayla written all over it. In big capital letters. Underlined four times. With an exclamation point.

This is good, guys. Just you wait.

Unfortunate Event #1: The Elusive Subway.

We were on our own for lunch but a large group of people (my friends included) were going to Taco Cabana. Which I found really surprising because I didn't know people actually liked Taco Cabana. Like, seriously, if we're going to have tacos I'd much rather have Taco Bell. But then again, I'm probably not the most reliable judge of food.

Anyway, obviously I was not okay with Taco Cabana, but I did want to spend time with my friends, so I was going to get food elsewhere and then meet them there. I decided that I wanted Subway because a) Subway is kind of healthy, and I've been feeling guilty about all the junk I've been eating lately, and b) it sounded really good. So, I got in my car and set off for Subway. Only I couldn't remember exactly where it was, but I had a pretty good idea. So I headed that direction and figured I'd see it eventually.

So I'm driving. And I keep driving. And I keep driving. Because Subway is past all the other fast food restaurants. I know* that it's further up the road, so I just keep driving. And every once in awhile, I think I've passed it. So I start to turn around but then I see another group of buildings coming up and I convince myself that that's where Subway is. But it isn't. After doing this about three times, I began entering unrecognizable territory, so I decide to turn around for real this time.

*Me "knowing" where things are located is like a five year old "knowing" how to do calculus correctly

I'm driving back and looking for Subway. And I'm not finding it. And I'm like, "Are you kidding me? Was it seriously further up? Does Subway even exist anymore?" AND THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN, I SEE IT. And I'm like, "SUBWAY! I see you! But...how do I get to you...?"

It was like behind a bunch of restaurants and...I don't even know. Like, it was there, but it was hidden. So I maneuvered my way through the Walmart parking lot and down a couple back roads and finally I'm in the Subway parking lot -- the actual Subway parking lot! -- and I park and get out of my car.

Which brings me to...

Unfortunate Event #2: The Door with the Sandwich On It.

I walk into Subway, ECSTATIC because I'm really hungry, and the first thing I notice are SIX bulky guys, about high school age, probably football players, sitting together and staring at me (quite angrily I might add) in dead silence at Subway. Just sitting there. With no food. Not standing in line to order. And I was like, "Do these guys know how Subway works? You have to go stand in line..." But then I looked up and realized that there was no one at the register. There were employees in the back (who saw me walk in), but no one at the front. So I stepped to the side and joined the awkward silence while these big scary guys just...stared at me.

While I'm waiting, I can't help but notice that Subway is a lot smaller than I remembered it being. Did they remodel? Why would they remodel and make the place smaller? Or maybe it just looked smaller because of the new design. But the counter looked way too small to hold all the sandwich fixins. And why did it smell like pizza in there?

And then I look at the door, and right below the picture of something that very closely resembles a SANDWICH (and sandwich = Subway) are the words "Little Caesar's."

Sandwiches > Pizza.

 

Little Caesar's. Last time I checked, that was different than Subway. And I'm completely mortified at this point that I have walked into and stood in for several minutes the WRONG restaurant. I have been stared at by creepy high school boys that totally had the ability to kill me. I have been acknowledged (but not served) by some very busy Little Caesar's employees. And I could feel the eyes of all 6 scary boys and all 3 employees on me as I silently walked out and never returned.

And before I walked into Subway, I read every sign from top to bottom just to make sure.

Unfortunate Event #3: I Give Up.

Thankfully, I was able to get my 6" tuna sandwich on Italian without a hitch, and I made it to my car and out of the parking lot without incident.

By the way, at this point our one hour lunch break is more than half over.

Anyway, I'm driving to Taco Cabana to catch up with my friends (for, like, a whole 15 minutes), but I was so...flustered, I guess is the word...from everything that just happened that I passed Taco Cabana. And at first I was like, "I think I just passed it..." but then I was like, "oh, no, it's further up here." But it wasn't. And by the time I was 100% sure I had passed it, I was almost back to church.

There just wasn't any point in turning around.

I was probably just going to pass it again anyway.

So I pulled into church and found a table inside to eat at while I recovered from the previous 45 minutes' adventures.

So yes, ladies and gentlemen, in 45 minutes I managed to:

• Get lost on a street I have traveled hundreds of times
• Share some delightfully awkward moments with 9 strangers
• Get so distracted that I just straight up passed my destination
• Just give up, because seriously, why do I even try to be cool? 

By the way, those first three things happen so often that I had to give them their own tags.

And to my friends who may or may not have been waiting on me to show up at Taco Cabana (I'm not even sure they knew I was coming, but just in case): I DID NOT ditch you guys on purpose. I totally intended on showing up, and wanted to...but, like, seriously...I just needed a moment to myself. To recover. Because...it was a crazy 45 minutes, y'all. Real crazy. Kayla levels of crazy. And Lord knows it takes time to recover from Kayla crazy.

Kaylzy? Oh, I know! Crayla. Wait, no...that sounds like a crayon.

Whatever. It doesn't even deserve its own word. You know what they say: when you name things, you just get more attached.

Which doesn't really apply in this situation but that's okay. The point is...well, actually there isn't one. (Other than to make you feel better about yourself, of course).

Sorry to have wasted your time.

I Almost Died Today.

And now I know what it's like to see your entire life flash before your eyes.

And when you get through reading this, you're going to hate me for scaring you into thinking I almost died when in fact I was nowhere near death. But I wanted to die.

Here's how it went down:

I am taking a music class this semester called History of Jazz. Today we were scheduled to have a guest speaker who's a famous jazz drummer from New Orleans, named Adonis Rose (he toured with Harry Connick, Jr.!). It is also important to note that I almost skipped this class today, because of something going on in another class that overlapped with Jazz. However, when I heard we were having a guest speaker I was intrigued, and decided to work around the other thing.

Normally when people hear a guest speaker is coming to class they think they're going to like, come to class and talk and stuff, right? I thought he was going to speak about being in a jazz band and his background, and maybe play some drums for us.

Instead, he came into class, introduced himself and gave us a little bit of his background, and then he quizzed us.

Meaning, he picked on random people in the class to answer questions about jazz history. He called on me once. I didn't know the answer, but it wasn't a big deal. Most people didn't know the answers.

He then wanted to know who in the room were musicians by show of hands. So we raised our hands and then he asked specifically for singers, of which I am. So I kind of shyly raised my hand, but he was all like "Raise 'em real high!" so I raised my hand higher along with a couple other people in the class.

And then he was like, "Great, we'll have to get y'all up here to sing for us," and went on to ask if there were any rappers. We all chuckled when he said that because it was a funny joke.

It wasn't a joke.

And this is where my life starts flashing before my eyes.

After finding out if there were any rappers or poets in the room, he called on one of the singers to come up and sing a song. Per a fellow classmate's request, he sang You Are My Sunshine.

After that, he called on the only poor guy in the room who said he was a poet and made him recite a poem. I felt bad for the poor chum who recited this sappy love poem to the entire class. I'm sure it wasn't written for public recitation.

Then he goes back to the singers and I'm sitting in my chair shaking panicking convulsing and he calls on a girl in the front row. She sang At Last by Etta James, which is very appropriate for a jazz class. She sounded really good, but she hit a few bad notes, probably because nerves and big songs don't go well together.

Then he couldn't remember who else was a singer and I'm all like yes I'm off the hook! Praise God. and then he looks at me and points and says "You in the striped shirt" (and I regretted immediately wearing a striped shirt, though I'm not sure that made much of a difference).

And then I died.

But my vocal chords were still very much alive, which meant I had to get up and do this thing. He asked me what my name was and I squeaked out "Kayla". I could almost hear the Death March as I walked to the front of the class, which so conveniently has a stage.

I avoided all eye contact with the audience until I started singing. Adonis asked me what I was going to sing, and I tried to make a joke because I use humor as a defense mechanism. I said, "I'm going to sing a country song. I would do jazz but I don't know many of those."

I know what you're thinking...that's not funny. That's a perfectly normal statement to make...yeah. I know. It sounded funnier in my head.

So then I sang my song. The Night Before (Life Goes On) by Carrie Underwood. I sound good on that song and it was the first one I thought of so I went for it. And I sang through the first verse and chorus of that song, and I walked back to my seat to a reprise of the Death March, and then I died again.

And then another girl came up and just showed up all of us with her stupid confidence. She sounded like Norah Jones and she sang a song she wrote all by herself because apparently she's a budding singer/songwriter.

And now it's been about an hour since this horrific experience and I'm sitting in the cafe, still recovering. Still shaking a bit.

But on the bright side, my Facebook status about this experience has 15 likes and counting.

Awkward Moment #324.

I made up that number. It's really probably a lot higher than 324.

So classes started back up today. Well, they started yesterday, but I'm only taking Tuesday/Thursday classes so for me, they started today. Anyway.

I'm taking four classes, from 9:30-3:30. No breaks in between for lunch (that is called poor planning, people), but since today was mainly just going over the syllabus, I got out of almost all my classes 45 minutes early.

After my 11:00 class which I got out of about 11:40, I was starving, so I decided to head over to the University Center for lunch. I got Chickfila. It was yummy.

Anyway.

It's always really awkward trying to find seating in there. Because all the tables are usually occupied by multiple people...it's really hard to find one seat that's appropriately spaced from the other groups at the same table. But eventually I found one and sat down to enjoy my lunch.

Anyway.

I was facing another table, and a guy sat down on the side facing me with a Subway sandwich. While he was eating, I happened to notice a piece of lettuce stuck to his lip. So naturally, I did what anyone would do in this situation: I stared at it.

I wanted to see if it would fall off or if it was going to stay stuck there. So I'm staring at this guy for like, I don't know, a minute, when suddenly, he looks up. Right at me.

I quickly avert my gaze.

I turn my head slightly to look back down at my food, and out of my peripheral vision I see this guy smiling and waving at me.

Do I wave back? Do I acknowledge him? What do I do?

Well, I'll tell you what I did.

I mustered up some courage and eked out a very, VERY timid smile that you would only notice if you were looking for it really, REALLY hard.

And then he starts to get up. And I'm FREAKING out.

This is essentially what went through my head: Oh my gosh he's getting up. Oh my gosh. Is he coming over here? Don't look. Whatever you do don't look. Oh my gosh. Does he think you were trying to communicate interest? How do I explain to him that I was staring at him because he had a piece of lettuce stuck to his lip? This is going to be soooo awkward.

Anyway.

He gets up. And as he's doing so, he's saying something, but I can't tell what. And he starts walking...and he's getting closer and closer...

And he completely ignores me as he walks by and joins his friends at a different table.

Apparently, when I was staring at the lettuce on his lip, some friends of his at another table spotted him and yelled his name, which is why he looked up. And then the whole time he was smiling and waving at them, not me. Which hopefully means he didn't notice me smiling.

So I guess it wasn't really an awkward moment...but it almost was.

I felt awkward, at least.

REALLY awkward.

Moral of the story: don't stare at lettuce on strangers' lips.

The Texting Mannequin.

Soooo....I don't know if anyone's noticed, but I've been kind of MIA recently. The last couple weeks have been CRAZY. Reason being, the week before Thanksgiving is the week that all the teachers decide to make big projects/tests due. And due to my play being the week before, I was already behind. And then I've actually been surprisingly busy this week preparing for Thanksgiving. But now Thanksgiving is over and I actually have some time to accomplish some of the things on my "To Do Over Thanksgiving Break" list that has been slowly gathering dust...

Anyway, Thanksgiving yesterday was AWESOME. But I'll post about that tomorrow or Sunday, because I have another story I want to tell right now, and I like my blog to be in chronological order.


This is a totally random story from Tuesday but I want to share it because it's kind of hilarious. It was really awkward/frightening/embarrassing at the time, but now it's just funny. :-) haha, I will try to do it justice.

So, Tuesday my friend and I were shopping at Forever 21. We were trying on some clothes in the dressing room, but I got done first. So I was looking at the clothes right outside the dressing room while waiting for her.

I knew there was a mannequin nearby and as I was looking at a dress on one of the racks, I saw it out of the corner of my eye. I sort of did a double-take, because I noticed something I didn't notice before. The mannequin was looking at something in its hands.

Was the mannequin texting? It sure looked like it. Wow, I thought. They really have our generation nailed. I wasn't quite sure how a texting mannequin would help sell clothes, but hey, I'm not their marketer. What do I know?

Then I looked again. Was that a real cell phone the mannequin had? It sure looked like it. That's weird that they would actually buy a real cell phone for a fake person...

So I got a little closer. And closer, and closer, and closer...until I was right up next to it, just staring at the cell phone.

And then it turned and looked at me.

OH MY GOSH. Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh. It was a real person! Holy crap, it was a real person. A real person that I was standing about 2 inches away from. Staring at their cell phone. I wanted to die.

As soon as she looked at me, my reflexes kicked in. I have never turned around and pretended to be interested in an ugly piece of clothing so fast in my life. Seriously. It was almost ninja-like.

I was so mortified, and the girl gave me weird looks the rest of the time I was in the store. But I don't really blame her. I would have done the same thing.

Like that one time, when I was in the girls' bathroom at a restaurant washing my hands and a man walked in. (Yes, you read right, a MAN.) I gave him weird looks every time I saw him, too. Well, actually, I just cracked up laughing. But same difference.

Anyway, that story was probably A LOT funnier in person. And to me. But I thought I'd share it anyway. :-) And look out in a few days for stories from Thanksgiving!