Previously, I have sung the praises of Sodexo and its stellar employees. However, as I strode into the Caf a few days ago, I was greeted with two surprises, only one of which was pleasant. I have always sat in the area overlooking the ice cream machine and the cereal section. (Funny enough, there’s a microwave over there just in case you want to heat up your milk before you pour in your cereal.)
The usual high-top seating has been replaced by the low orange chairs usually found by the windows in Sadler. I was glad to see that the tables were lower than they had been in Sadler, as in Sadler they are much too high.
I sat down with my soup into the loving embrace of these orange arms, delighted by the change in height. Now the tables had no illusions as to their purpose as a coffee table. In Sadler they’d been living in a constant identity crisis, and I was happy to see that they were now mentally stable.
This was the only pleasant surprise. I took a loud slurp of my scrumptious soup, relishing in the sweet burns it gave my mouth and tongue.
As I placed my bowl down, I looked away from the table just before pulling out my phone to enter a virtual world of seclusion. If you really must know, I planned to peruse the wonderful cesspool of intelligence called Reddit, but I also expected to explore the wholesomeness of my Instagram feed dominated by Old Row and Barstool. In this brief hiatus between looking at my food and looking at my phone, my eyes struck the wall behind the cereal and the ice cream machine, only to find that, in my absence, it had been painted purple. It looked hideous. It was an affront to any good taste that has ever existed in this world. To think that they would have the gall to paint this wall purple bewilders me.
There is nothing in the entire cafeteria that vaguely resembles the color purple. Everything is red, brown, orange or even green. How dare you.
This wall offended my very soul. In this moment of existential crisis, I did the only thing one can do when faced with imminent self-destruction. I texted my mother. My mother also happens to be an interior designer. I told her about my predicament and that I’d sooner walk into oncoming traffic than paint the wall that atrocious color. She suggested that, as a form of donation to the school, she should consult with them on their decorating advice, and that the College of William and Mary’s interior designers had been on thin ice trying to squeeze in even a shade of green amongst all the red earthy tones, let alone any purple.
She also corrected my ignorance and said that the color was not purple, but lavender.
I know paint is cheap. I know that it takes relatively little time and resources to paint a wall like the one in the Commons. I also don’t know if the paint on that wall needed a new coat, but to quote an old proverb from my grandpapa “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
But what I do know is that looking at that purple wall is like looking at the demon creatures in “Bird Box.”
It’s a slap in the face to my very character, a violation of the Geneva Convention and basic human rights.
Why, cruel world, did it have to be that color? You could’ve just painted the wall the same color, or maybe any neutral tone that doesn’t fight the rest of the room. Now it shouts at me every time I walk past. Every time I get ice cream or microwave some milk I get berrated by this belligerent wall, a crude and callous representation of Man’s fall from grace.
To the individuals responsible for the purple wall: You better get your ducks in a row right now or else I may not even regret going to St. Andrews next year.
Email Christian Borio at cmborio@email.wm.edu.