Crackle Girl: A Short Story

This morning I had my Cost Management lecture, so I get over to the theater, make my way down the steps as I keep a keen eye for Cute Cashier From Safeway, and opt for a seat near the front. Just as class is about to start, this girl rushes in, carrying a cup of take-away coffee and a paper bag of what I assume is some sort of pastry or bun, and she sits right next to me, plonking her bag down on the empty chair on her other side.

So my lecturer starts talking and I get my attentive face out, with a plan to listen properly and take notes(I swear!). The girl next to me takes her lecture slides out, her pencil box and stuff all ready, and then she starts eating whatever it was she bought in the paper bag.

Okay, I thought. Must have missed breakfast. Wonder what she's having,I wish I could have a pastry too. So I focus back on my nice lecturer, but I find that I'm having a hard time concentrating, and I soon ascertain it's because from beside me crackling noises are coming out at regular intervals. Every few seconds-crackle. A few more seconds after-more crackling.

Out of the corner of my eye I see the girl is still eating whatever she bought, and it's not a pastry after all, because she uses a spoon to dig into it. And every time she goes to dig some more of it out, she grips the paper bag, thus causing the crackling sound.

The noise soon gets under my skin, and what was one second ago a mere background sound effect has now morphed into the bane of my very existence at this very moment. I can't concentrate on what the lecturer is saying and though I try to clutch on to his explanations of cost allocation and cost drivers, I am being swallowed by the fury that is emerging for this idiot of a girl who is still bloody crackling the bloody paper bag even though it's now half and hour into the lecture and we've covered quite a few slides.

I want to turn to her and scream "WTF, WOMAN??". She just crackles, chews, crackles, chews, and takes a swig of her coffee. I can hear her paper bag crackling, I can hear her bloody chewing, and I can hear her gulping her coffee, it's driving me mad!

I try to sigh loudly, to give her a hint that it's bothering me, but of course she doesn't notice and continues chew,chew,chewing and crackling the paper bag. And for a minute I'm stumped, is it just me who finds it annoying? The girl on my other side gave the Crackle Girl a look just now, but she doesn't seem perturbed, she's furiously scribbling on her notes and high-lighting all the necessary bits. Crackle Girl is oblivious, of course, she's eating while turning the pages of her slides to keep up with the lecturer. Is this normal? Am I being overly sensitive?

10 minutes later she finishes(whoo!), puts the damn paper bag aside and takes out a pencil and bends over her slides, writing something. I think,'at last!', and feel somewhat sheepish('must have been overreacting just now') and turn to give my full attention once more to VG(my lecturer).

But wait. Crackle Girl, in her intent to write notes, has placed her left elbow on my table. MY TABLE. Isn't there a bloody courtesy rule that says you can't mess with the space of people you don't know? Especially people you've just annoyed the hell out of by chewing and crackling for the past 40 minutes? It's not smack in the middle of my table, it's to the side, but it prevents me from putting MY elbow on the table when I want to write something.

I narrow my eyes at her to give her a death glare, but her head's still bent over and so I admit, I spied on what she was writing on. It turns out she's not writing at all, she's DRAWING. Fucking DRAWING. Drawing flowers! FLOWERS! What the hell do flowers have to with Cost Management?!

She draws a flower, followed by another, and another, until she has a whole bunch. She snaps to attention at something VG says, takes out a red pen and writes down something(related to the lecture this time), then goes back to drawing. We change pages on our slides, and she starts drawing a princess.

And while I was mad, some part of me found it pathetically funny. Here I was, fuming over this girl, too chicken to say something for fear of coming off like an overly sensitive prick, too caught up in being annoyed that she was drawing and that her stupid elbow on my table to just shrug it off and pay attention to the lecturer. And there she was, happily and intently drawing, concentrating only when she thought it was necessary, completely oblivious of me and my troubles. I had initially started off with righteous anger and notions of superiority, thinking I was the better one for wanting to pay attention, learn something,etc, while she was the fool for her drawing and her nonsense. But between the two of us, she was probably the one better off. She herself was choosing to either draw or listen, while I on the other hand was letting my actions(in this case my attention) be dictated by by my irritation for her. Why couldn't I just choose to ignore her and listen to VG?

Does this make sense? Bleh. I'm crap at describing what are already crappy, nonsensical thoughts to begin with.

When the first hour was up and we had a break, I looked around and saw Tai waving at me. He proved to be my savior, having an empty seat beside him for me to move to.

Trivial woes.