Yeah, man, it’s Sunday night, and I just want some samosas. I’m tired, gonna be honest with you, and the last thing on my mind is getting caught up in the melodrama and minutia of awkward social interaction with people I know peripherally, but understand very little about–and so it is probably for a cruel, ironic reason that Flomo has kids lining up out of the door to shovel a meager amount of food onto their plate. See, they’re queued out the wazoo and the line’s moving so slowly and there’s absolutely no reason why they should be lined up the way that they are. And so this is why we need the Conga Line Policy.
The team here at the flipside, we’re old. Effervescent, yes, stallions, yes, could rob a 7-11 while posted on a Zebra? Check and check and check. But in our valiant effort to shift the dominant narratives at the school (ie: the computer scientists in little gaggles like ospreys descending upon any fresh idea possible and ossifying it until it can be commodified into a package essentially labeled ‘Open to Destroy Democracy), which are all basically Pandora’s Box, we’ve hit a wall.
So at Flomo I was getting heated. I was about to throw rice at someone. Or just smush my whole hand in the curry chicken. I was prepared for something and I don’t know what it was, but the fact that it could be anything? Now, that terrifies me. And my frustration was only rising–seeing the line barely move, seeing that everyone was so self-conscious about how much time they were spending wielding the tongs, seeing a spectacle of friends cutting in line with their friends, shuffling around in awkward ballet movements to small-talk their way into line. Or maybe a lot of them were being genuine, but that’s not the point–the point is why is there a goddamn line! Take your food and go! No traffic jams if there aren’t lanes on the highway, come on people.
Now perhaps I’m jaded and cynical and old or just plain washed. But as I was forced to choke down potato salad from my trembling fingers, my vision completely occluded by red smears of blood lust, so came a vision so endearing and beautiful and lovely, I looked up at my friend Mathew and unleashed a studiable lesion of jargon right to his face. Conga lines, Matt, get these people moving, Matt, we gotta do it, Matt get in there and just put our hands on each others beautiful beautiful shoulders and we’re gonna be heroes, Matt, we’re going to be heroes.
