An Episode with Ice

I work with teenagers in my job, and I facilitate a girls' group once a week in the evenings. At our first meeting, we were gathering around the table and I was getting ready to begin. The door to the room swung open, and I was startled to find about 35 people pouring into the room.

I should tell you that the building where this meeting takes place has a lot of other stuff going on at the same time, we just use one room of the building. The people who were coming into my room were a group of adults who had come to watch an "invited dress rehearsal" of a play that was being put on basically in the next room.

As the group walked right in to my meeting, their spokesperson said "Hi, we need to use this room for a few minutes."

I said "Um... why?"

She said, "Well, they are working on the curtain call out there and they asked us to leave the room so we wouldn't see it ahead of time. Why? What time does your group start?"

As I looked pointedly at the clock, which read 7:05, I replied "7 pm". "Oh, OK," she said, making no move to get these strangers out of my classroom.

Meanwhile, the people are milling around the room, commenting on the things I have placed around the room, sitting at our tables, etc. I wasn't exactly sure what to do next.

Moments later, I look over at the table of snacks and drinks I have laid out for the girls. A woman I've never seen is helping herself to the snacks and the (unopened) drinks. As she opens the 2-Liter, it starts to leak. Instead of opening it all the way, she just holds the leaking bottle over the ice bucket. The clean ice for the drinks! THE DRINKS FOR THE TEENS!

I had no idea what to say next. I just stood there, opening and closing my mouth, and occasionally saying "Um... um", much to the amusement of 12 giggling teenage girls. Finally the woman looked up and said "Oh, I guess I shouldn't have done that, huh? Hey, are these snacks for us?"

As we say in the south: Bless her heart.