By Sophia Strawser, Assisstant Features Editor

We’ve all been stranded. Balancing your food in your arms, you survey Au Bon Pain while attempting to find a table during the lunch rush. You look outside and all you see is rain. You silently curse out the one girl sitting alone with only her laptop as a companion in the last booth. She may be the sweetest girl on campus but she now, in your eyes, has become the Devil himself. (Please forgive me, girl with the laptop whom I cursed out yesterday.) Your friends and you don’t know how to handle the situation so you congest the area until you see someone stand. It is as if you are a wild animal in the jungle. You see the tiniest of movements and you flinch. You pounce on your prey, that being the open table. Running to their side, you ask if they are leaving. They inform you they are just getting a napkin: failure. You again stand, overlooking the jungle until another creature moves. You again leap, and this time you get the signal to sit down. Mission accomplished.

                  Although the odds of you stumbling across Au Bon Pain when it is not busy isn’t likely, it can happen. Let’s say you stroll into ABP around four o’clock. Every table is yours for the picking. After much thought and deliberation you pick a booth from away from the only other person in the restaurant. You may not have to fight for a table but now you have the issue of silence. You’ve got a sandwich and chips. In a quiet ABP with the music at a moderate level your sandwich and chips have the potential of creating a soundtrack all on their own. You set up your laptop, putting in your ear buds. You soon become unaware of just how loud you are chewing: it’s as if you are gnawing on screws and bolts. The handful of people in the restaurant is now staring at you; no one likes to listen to the sound of chewing. If they do stare, befriend them. Turn the music on your laptop down, switch a bag of chips for an asiago breadstick (don’t worry, it’ll still make you fat) and tune in to how loud you chewing. The world knows you exist; no need to let it know you are here by chewing so loud the gods can hear. Oh and hon, chew with your mouth closed please. We aren’t in elementary school anymore.

                  Thank goodness for the beautiful weather lately because it automatically gives Hofstra students more seating, clearing the jungle of any unneeded tension. So as the weather brightens the wild animals soon part from each other, spreading out throughout the jungle. Never will college students become more aggressive than when it is a situation dealing with their one true love, food. It’s our very own jungle here on the urban Long Island.