I can't believe these things happen to me...

Today was the last day of chamber music camp at Settlement. It was nice, but I just had the weirdest morning ever.


My mom had some meeting or something (boring) in Center City and she was going to drop me off early, but it was eighty-five degrees (at seven-thirty!) and, quite understandably, I didn't want to sit outside the locked building in the muggy heat, especially in concert dress. So I went to Panera.
In Panera they had air conditioning, music, and (very importantly) a bathroom. I walked up to the guy at the counter and I asked in what I thought was a polite tone, "Hi, where's the restroom?" and he gave me this look that was, like, You don't know? and said "That way" and I was thinking, Should I know where the bathroom is?
When I came out I went to go order some food. So I went back up to the same guy, and his face just said Oh, no, not you again. 
I ordered a sourdough roll, a muffie, and an iced tea. Then this utterly helpful guy was like "We're out of those, do you want a bread bowl? It's similar," and I was like What's a bread bowl? and I was just really hungry. I said "Sure" and declined to have it cut.


And then I found out what it was. What it was, it turns out, was enormous.

I was kind of at a loss as to what to do with this Godzilla roll. I did not want to admit defeat to the Panera employees. I set my tray down at a table and my English horn/oboe double case on the chair. Casually sauntering over to the drinks, I filled my cup with iced tea and stirred in some Sweet 'n' Low... then realized I hadn't put in any ice. What I failed to realize was that the ice comes out of those machines pretty fast. Fast enough, in fact, that if you put it in a cup that already has liquid, the liquid will splash everywhere.


I am cursed by a lack of foresight.


So that's what I did, and the Panera employees giggled. They actually GIGGLED at me! I tried to act like nothing had happened by walking calmly back to my seat...


...where my gigantic roll awaited. I still wasn't really sure what to do. I mean, it was not only gigantic but also had a super-thick, tough crust. First I tried cutting it like you would cut a waffle, but the butter knife they gave me literally didn't make a dent. My next impulse was to try breaking it in half with my hands, which seemed feasible, so I attempted this. Unfortunately, it made this really, really loud crinkling noise and teeny flakes of crust burst off and scattered all over the table. I thought that maybe the volume of the crinkling noise was just my imagination at first, but then a couple people at other tables looked over. Oops.


Obviously I was just going to have to bite into the thing. But that didn't really seem appropriate in the cafe. So I grabbed my stuff, set the tray down, grabbed the monstrous roll in a napkin, and ran out.


Guess I can cross "Wander around Willow Grove, PA, at eight in the morning when it's grossly humid and eighty-five degrees, in concert dress, carrying an oboe and an English horn and eating a humongous roll" off my to-do list.


On the upside, our bit of the concert went really well. Here's some of it with me on English horn. (Ignore the visual aspect.)