A letter to those who chew.

Dear friend of a friend at the lunch table,

I have been sitting next to you at lunch for a semester now. I sometimes enjoy your company there. We sit, we complain about that teacher we both had together, and eat our Nachos Grande with apple sauce. But that's where the fun stops. Any enjoyment I could possibly have at the lunch table is flattened into the ground with those excess chicken bites of fire the second you put food into your mouth.

I often wonder if you were raised by rabid gerbils or hogs. That sickening sound coming from your saliva I didn't know could be produced by a human. When I see pellets of mystery meat spewing from your motioning mouth I gag. I gag when you lick up chili from your unwashed hands. I gag when I can view in 3D your Big Daddy pizza while it turns into a ball of spittle and processed tomato inside your mouth. I gag when you're laughing while consuming half-chewed pasta and it soars across the table into somebody else's red sauce. I physically gag.

Had I not known your eating habits my reputation of you would be in the "okay" range, but at this point you're leaning towards "a terrible soul" or "should not have survived natural selection." By now I've watched you eat like a starving crazed wolf so many times I propose one solution and one solution only.

You need to eat alone. Unless you have some revelation and you can eat like a civilized human, you need to eat your food far away from the table--anywhere else. Buy your food, visit the bathroom, chew spit lick and swallow your charred burger alone. Then and then only may you come back to the table and chat in peace.

If you don't accept this proposal that's reasonable and okay, but keep in mind that from now on if I can see or hear the food you are masticating, I will take my fist, close your jaw, and proceed to punch you with said fist in said jaw.

With love,

Your tablemate Alexis