kleine schanze

This is the park otherwise known as "Hooker Park", but that's only at night.

I knew if I came home today, I'd get distracted from my math exam (and here I am, blogging, so yeah, I was definitely right) so I spent a bit of time trying to make progress on it in the park.

So I walk into this park and there are benches everywhere and most of them are occupied, and I see the absolute perfect thing, which is a picnic table (and there's only one). So I start walking towards it, and then this random 20-something couple decides to sit down. So I have to awkwardly turn around and sit down at like, the closest possible place, which happened to be this weird quasi-bench thing. I figured they probably wanted to have a picnic or read a map or something, and I'd steal the picnic table away when they were done. So I pulled out my exam.

And it turns out, they don't use the table part of it at all; they're just nuzzling each other and whatnot, which they could totally have done on any old bench, including the one I was using, so I would have been happy to trade.

The only reason I know this is that every time I lost my math-focus I'd start wondering when they'd give up the table, or whether they'd left it yet, and I'd look over, and they'd be making out, and I'd feel like a giant creeper. I almost wanted to say to them, "I'm not trying to stalk your lovefest; I just really want that table."

Eventually my quasi-bench got unbearably uncomfortable so I figured I might as well sit in the grass, and I found this great spot against a tree. And then I realized that positioned that way, I was literally staring right at them every time I looked up.

And eventually they left and I stole the table but I figured out about thirty seconds later was that the reason they left was that the sun had moved so the table was in the shade. And it was freezing. They completely hogged the sunny table, which would have been lovely for math-exam-taking. I was (read: still am) bitter (read: randomly furious).

I seriously considered asking them to move so that I could have the table (which they totally weren't using), but I don't have enough faith in my german. I envisioned it going down something like this-

Me: Can I table use?

Couple: *confused looks*

Me: Can I... Your table?

Couple: *bewilderment*

Me: Ummmmm Auf Wiedersehen?

I also entertained the idea that I might sit down at the same table (because they were ONLY USING ONE SIDE OF THE BENCH-PART, SO THEY TOTALLY COULD HAVE BEEN ON A BENCH) and just start working and see if they felt awkward.

I was seriously *this* close.

And now I'm really angry that I didn't, because I really wanted to pleasantly do math work in the sun.

The only reason I'm not completely suicidal about this whole mess is that I saw a man with a beard and a top hat (a metal-looking top hat, if that makes sense. Not like it looked like it was made out of metal, but it was the sort of top hat that indicated that its wearer liked metal) riding a bicycle on my way home.

Also, random real conversation of the day-

Thomas: Is this in any way connected to what we were talking about?

Me: Yeah I'm getting to that part. Outdoor parties, is the point of this.

Thomas: Then why are you talking about Darfur?

Bonus points to the Potomac kids who can figure out where I was going with that.

Love always,
Clara