By Maliha Momtaz Oishi
Last Saturday, a man was spotted sitting at a table at _PopularRestaurantName_ surrounded by a couple of empty chairs and a cup of frappuccino. It was reported that he was scrolling through his phone with no visible expression on his face.
Upon inquiry, onlooker A said, ”There was just a certain sadness in his eyes, I could tell.” Onlooker B said, ”To be so lonely in a world like ours, I cannot imagine the pain he must have been going through. I wish him all the happiness and success for his future.” We asked them the reason behind such strong sentiments about a man they’d seen only ten seconds ago. “Like, does he not have friends? I eat outside all the time and sure, I may forget to pay, I may forget to ‘place an order’ but I always remember to take a friend with me. Even last week, I told my friend C that her dog’s medical appointment can wait, what matters is that I feel too awkward to eat alone. I’d take her with me today as well, but for some reason, the texts I sent her won’t go through”, said onlooker B. Onlooker A said, “I’m sure he was just pretending to look at his phone so that people wouldn’t see him crying. I mean, who goes to a restaurant to ‘eat’? It’s common knowledge that if you’re not taking photos with friends and laughing every second for the entire hour at a restaurant, it means you’re sad and have no will to live.”
We looked further into the matter and asked the man his take the whole situation, ”I dunno, I go there for free Wi-Fi”. “People think you have no friends, how do you feel about that?”, we asked. The man was not pleased. “What do they know? I have 7 friends on Facebook and one of them is my girlfriend who I’ve been dating for over 4 years, so maybe they should think before they point any fingers. Maybe I’ll bring her to that restaurant when I meet her for the first time, that’ll show them. Plus it’s perfectly fine to eat alone. Yeah I know, I checked on Quora”, he said.