There are no plates in Homeplate. It no longer feels like home. Where does that leave the name? Imagine if they stopped serving food in Food Court. There would be an uproar! Where has the uproar been over the anachronistic name of Homeplate? We might as well start calling it ___________.
Yeah, I've heard all the usual complaints about Homeplate.
"It looks sterile!"
"The lines are really long!"
"One of my waffles fries fell on the floor!"
Do everyone a favor and just hush yourself. You are complaining about superficial issues that are easily fixed.
It looks sterile? Put on a pair of the old-school 3-D glasses. You know the ones I'm talking about. Paper frames, red and blue lenses. Sterile no more.
The lines are really long? Either choose to eat at Homeplate at a time other than 1:35 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, or just go up to a random '14, pretend you know them and ask them to order you a sandwich. It's still early enough that they'll think you're good friends and they just forgot.
One of your waffle fries fell on the floor? That's actually kind of tragic, but maybe you should learn the senior play and put your free hand on top of your waffle mountain as soon as you, the wide receiver, catch the pass from the quarterback behind the counter. Wait, sports references have no place in The Mirror. Ignore that last part.
I've gotten off topic. Can we talk about the lack of plates in Homeplate?
If you're reading this and are thinking, "But Tom, there are plates in Homeplate!" Then you are a '14 and should go back to throwing totally sick pregames on Wednesday nights.
For the rest of us reading this (see: people), you know the plates I'm talking about. The ones that adorned the walls of the Homeplate eating area and made it such a wonderful place.
These plates were the official plates for other universities and colleges and they were awesome. Official plates for Harvard, official plates for SUNY-Purchase, official plates for Middlebury. Didn't even know official plates were a real thing? Me neither.
I actually have a dream. Many nights. This is not a dream where people will be judged by the content of their character. Although that would be a cool dream. This dream is that I will go into "The Eating Establishment Formerly Known as Homeplate" and order my usual panini. Nothing about this is out of the ordinary, besides the fact that my teeth are falling out. And then, when my panini is served, it is on an official Princeton University plate. I'm so excited that I take the plate and throw it against the milk machine, where it shatters into a million little pieces. Somewhere in the background, the Jurassic Park construction monster rears its ugly head. (Sorry I stole your joke, Cyrus Akrami '11. Here's some facetime in return.)
And then there is the loss of the feeling of home. Why did I love the old Homeplate, besides the good food and the plates? It was the ability to hide myself. I'm hideous and don't deserve to be seen in public, just like most of us. Especially not eating. Homeplate was the perfect place for that. You could hide for days in those booths. They were each their own Fortress of Solitude.
What do we have now? Rows of tables. Rows upon rows of tables. Nowhere to hide, besides under the tables. But that's really played out. I'm actually developing a theory that the wall blocking off Pavilion is really like the wall to Platform 9 . Eating there will be the real senior play.
This week's LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL comes to use from the Nation of Israel. That's right, folks: Jewkies, a.k.a. Pavilion cookies, a.k.a. the Jewish version of old-school Catholic indulgences. The commute to and from Israel's colony of cookies has gotten significantly shorter, and the window of opportunity now lasts until 2:30 p.m. Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice, you hungry masses.
