“School breakfast is the worst,” I lamented to Cody across the table.
“Wuh?,”  he breathed. His mouth was filled with stale bread like a gluttonous hippo. I muttered “Nothing…”, but he was too busy gorging himself on my barely-touched food to notice. What a great friend. I stole a quick glance at my watch and groaned when I realized that school didn’t start for another 20 minutes.
Hopelessly, I looked around the crowded cafeteria to find something to put my mind on so that I wouldn’t flip over the table in agitation. Of course, no luck. If I hadn’t known it was impossible, I would have thought that someone, somewhere was trying their hardest to make my Monday morning as excruciatingly boring as possible. Unsatisfied and defeated, I buried my face into my hands and hoped I could get a quick nap in.
“Walter?” I suddenly heard Phil asking me. “Go put my trays away, will ya?” I jumped at the opportunity despite how mundane it obviously was. I grabbed my tray, Cody’s tray and any other random trash I could find and made a beeline straight for the tray deposit area. Apparently, I had chosen the wrong time to try to be helpful, and everyone else followed suit.
CRASH! At that very moment, I lost my balance and all the trays and trash I was carrying flew up in the air before lying in messy heap mere feet from the destination of the trash can. Petrified, I stood in front of half the school, my face getting hotter and hotter.
“Idiot!” I said to myself as I angrily stormed away while a round of applause showed me off like I just got done with a stellar performance or something. I could hardly believe the audacity of whoever it was that first started the clapping. I tried to explain to anyone and everyone still giving me strange looks that it wasn’t my fault it was uh… the guy next to me’s fault. No one believed me. I didn’t feel like sitting back with Phil, because I knew he would just rub more salt in my wound. Fittingly enough the table with the least amount of people in it just so happened to be where I had lost my balance earlier.
Ashamed, I checked my watch. 15 more minutes. After that, I opted to just keep my head down so people would get the hint that I don’t want to be bothered anymore. This worked for what I think was 2 minutes until I got a light tap on the shoulder.
“Hey Walter,” a voice said. I recognized it as Blake from my science class. We would talk sometimes before class. Not a big deal.
“Hey Blake,” I responded semi-annoyed.
“You know, nobody really cared about your tripping thing,” he said. “It was really just a few guys who got a kick out of the moment and thought that it would be funny to start laughing.”
“Thanks,” I told him raising my head up. “I’ve just been having a rough start of my day.” And with that we just started chatting for a while.
I looked at my watch. “Woah!” I said to Blake. “Time to go already,” Time sure flies when you have a good friend.