Introducing A Tale of Two Tommies. Get your weekly dose of comedy and petty debate from our newest columnists, Matthew LeBlanc and Robbie Lynn.
Matt: A dreary Tuesday, the Margaret McCain study hall is cocooned in silence. Students quietly question every choice they’ve ever made. Five minutes of productivity are cashed in for fifteen lucrative minutes of procrastination. The familiar smell of salty tears wafts through the air. Bliss.
An unmistakable crunch suddenly pierces the room. The students are dazed and disoriented: The study hall’s unwritten law of silence has been shattered. A second crunch echoes in tandem; the source is local-area man’s chewing of uncooked carrots and hummus. Social order implodes, chaos ensues. Anarchy.
Aristotle once wrote that all actions strive towards an end. The end of shipbuilding is a vessel, that of economics is wealth, and that of Crocs is celibacy. Interfering with an actions’ fulfillment of its end is unnatural, unjust, and perverse. Disrupting the study hall’s cosmic order by eating crunchy food both interferes with the student’s ability to study and debilitates our education. An intrusive crunch to one is an attack on us all.
The study hall is a place of study, just as the cinema is a place of movies or Klub Khrome a place of regrets. It is our campus’ singular safe haven for guaranteed quiet study. We as students hold the inalienable right to study in MMH in silence. If we tolerate carrots today, we welcome headphoneless binge-watching tomorrow and before we know it, we’ll have regular kazoo concerts by kindergartners. We must uphold the integrity of the study hall before it is too late.
Section 91 of the Constitution Act 1867 declares Canada’s laws maintain peace, order, and good government. The consumption of crunchy foodstuff in the study hall directly undermines the peace and order of our great educational institution. Either we ban all food from the study hall or we descend into lawless anarchy. The choice is clear.
Robbie: When the tank’s empty you gotta fill er up — true fact.
I’m a simple guy. I work hard in school, watch Netflix, play squash on the weekends. But I’m busy enough that I can’t always make it home to the apartment to share the communal pot of KD and hotdogs. Tuesdays are busy since I have night class. I like to optimize my supper hour by enjoying a packed lunch in the study hall. I keep the lunch pretty simple: crackers and cheese, bruschetta and baguette, PB&J.
Every Tuesday I’ve had the same routine and nobody’s said so much as an impolite “cough cough.” But last Tuesday, when I was enjoying a modest snack of baby carrots and hummus, some holier-than-thou political science major had the nerve say, “Do you mind? The study hall is for the joy of intellectual achievement. It is no place for baby carrots or small fries.”
Who does this guy think he is? I don’t see a sign that says no food or drink in the study hall.
The study hall is a safe space of inclusion and love and it does not need this kind of academic elitism. Eating is a bodily function, people. There is no limit to the restrictions these big-brother-like weight watchers will enforce. It won’t be long before we’ll be huddled outside in the winter just to enjoy a few Popeye candy sticks.
Calling all snackers, munchers, feasters. It’s time to stop feeling ashamed for our messy, sloppy, or smelly lunches. Eat your deviled eggs, your sardines, your tuna sandwiches. We decide what goes into our bodies. If we don’t stand up to this blatant fascism then soon enough the human race will be eating itself.
