SYMPHONY NO. 6.5 (Third Movement) THE AWAKENING OF JOY UPON ARRIVING AT THE POST-AWARDS CEREMONY BUFFET TABLE

The graduate’s award-winning thesis is entitled “Pre-Bolshevik Gender Distinctions Among the Proletariat in the Wenzhou Communal Joss Stickeries:  1888-1909” or something like that.  Two more diplomas to be doled out, and then it’s on to the free grub at the reception behind the stage. I survey the scene nervously; it isn’t good.

For one thing, what was I thinking allowing myself to be crammed into the middle of the row? The little 300 year-old reception hall is jammed with scores of assorted perspirerers fanning themselves with their programs, many of them (such as the guests to my immediate right and left) selfishly bulging over the borders of their own seats in a manner the craftsfolk who constructed this place could not have foreseen, working at a time when the average person was approximately two feet narrower than today‘s model.

The aisles will admit only a single-file flow of foot traffic. Because, prior to the start of this afternoon’s ceremony, the first 100 spaces closest to the stage were roped off and reserved for family, friends, and people who actually know at least one of the participants, I am unable to get anywhere near the points of anterior egress leading directly to the spread waiting on the other side of the curtain. The Chancellor is now reciting the name of the next doctoral tome: “Lint as an Engine of Social Change on the Early 18th Century Scottish Railroad.”  That sounds sooooooooo interesting says someone to no one in particular.  No one in particular doesn’t respond.

Amateur photographers (mostly somebody’s mothers, I surmise) are already throwing elbows indiscriminately,  holding camera phones aloft, and blinding the assembly with a thousand points of light. In this way, the backs of the heads of perfect strangers will be preserved for posterity.

“Draft Legislative Resolutions of a Celibate Temperance Quilting Cult in Antebellum New England” intones the Chair of the department announcing the title of the last scholarly paper to receive committee recognition this term. “Please join me in congratulating this year’s graduates, and I hope to see you all for refreshments in the back room,” she invites to a hearty round of applause. 

This is, of course, a cue to move, much like the miners did in the California gold rush of ‘49.  But, as always happens in these situations, the person at the end of the row, who has it within his power to clear some lanes for the rest of us, refuse to do so, opting, instead, to stop and chat and mill around.

I see that the other rows are starting to empty out and the guests begin making their way methodically towards the food.  But our group doesn’t budge an inch.  It seems that the fellow holding up the line, some pompous windbag who regards himself as a luminary of sorts, pauses to glad hand a large cross sample of the shuffling throng, regaling them with his latest doings, and  offering an autograph or encouraging word to the occasional supplicant moving past us happily towards the catered spread.  I look to the right, but there is no means of escape in that direction.  I begin to have visions of strategic supplies of finger food dwindling exponentially in the next room. Panic sets in.

Having thoroughly canvassed the scene during the earlier presentation of the Irving R. Schlumpadick Award for the essay which best embodies the spirit of meaningless esoterica, I have already mapped out in my head the swiftest route from my seat to the outer rim of knishes not 50 yards away. But I am stymied by the chattering fool holding up the line. Reflexively,  I begin to arrange my tongue and teeth together after a fashion, and an urgent noise comes out of my mouth that sounds very much like an impatient person yelling, “Let’s go!  Let’s go!”

Finally (after he has let just about everybody else get in front of him) he decides to make his way out -- slowly and deliberately. We are on the move, and  I now have a fighting chance to make up for lost time.

Except that now, the woman standing between me and the aisle thinks this an opportune moment to take a phone call from her broker or her drug dealer or her cat psychologist or who ever the hell it is. “That’s unacceptable!” she repeats many times with such impeccable enunciation and volume that everyone from those gathered in the hall to the dead people in the cemetery across the street are certain to hang on every nuance in her speech. The other members of our row have now joined the current streaming towards the refreshments, but my way is blocked by the phone-a-thon unfolding before me.

Using the tip of my shoe,  I give her butt a little shake -- to ask if there is some mistake. So engrossed is she in the important work of reaming out the flea on the other end of the line, that she doesn’t notice. I figure I do not know this woman and will never see her again, so I try it a second time with  more gusto.  The phone still pressed to her ear, she whirls around to confront me with a look of contempt unencumbered by humanity.

“Did you just kick me?” she demands.

I smile and offer a few kind words in a bogus language made up on the spot.

“Don’t you speak English?” she whines.

I pretend that I am demonstrating a little jig from my native country -- OompaLoompaLand -- and I chuckle heartily as I bow and show her the basic steps.

“Unbelievable,” she mutters turning to exit the row.

“Lapppaskirmbaladar,” I reply with characteristic OompaLoompalandic insouciance.  

She disappears into the crowd, and I, myself, am now at the opening, ready to merge.  But wait. What is this? An old person in a wheelchair being pushed by some hapless grandchild or hired hand.  They’re not going to let me in!? Are they serious!? I simply can’t allow this.  It would be like getting stuck behind a garbage truck on a two-lane mountain road.

I stretch out my arm to stop their progress dead in its tracks. “Pincusmingmandelbaum” [“Security” in OompaLoompaLandic], I say authoritatively, shoving them gently backward into someone who looks like a vicar from a British television show.

Now I must make up for lost time. I look the other way innocently while I hip check the pregnant lady at ten o’clock, stepping on her shoe for extra push. Just beyond her, the befuddled tourist admiring the carved gargoyles on the ceiling is no match, and  I slither past him. A couple of children squirming  on the floor, likewise, put up little resistance, as I step over them. 

Someone up ahead nearly collapses from a coughing fit or heat stroke, or what-have-you. The crush of do-gooder Samaritans siphoning themselves off from the main artery to render aid opens up a new front, and I can’t believe my good fortune as I leapfrog my way forward.

I have made excellent progress and have the reception room dimly in my sights. This is when I run into the lady in a cast hobbling on crutches at a snail‘s pace and her over-sized husband supporting her with his forearm, and sucking up most of the oxygen in the vicinity at the same time. Though daunting, the obstruction they have created is not insurmountable.  Regarding them with the kind of contempt usually reserved for couples who bring their screaming infants to big people restaurants, I detour momentarily into a side row.  Steadying myself on one of the woman’s crutches, I hop over a bench to pass them.

Without looking back, I hear her utter what to me is a now-familiar honorific: “Jerk!”  It is possible, I suppose, that it is actually the man who has uttered the word, but, if so, he has an extremely high-pitched voice for such a large fellow.

I am now in the home stretch. Soon, I will be in the promised land. I can just taste the freedom. It tastes like chicken salad on a roll.

And then it happens.  My worst nightmare. The people who had made it to the back room first while I had been delayed by my seatmates have already finished snacking and are now pouring back into the hall headed against the direction of my group -- the aged and the infirm in the second wave.

It is a massive standoff. No one is moving. Until I am actually being pushed backward. I am getting farther and farther away from the repast. The situation seems hopeless.

I’ve been in hopeless situations before, of course. But a guardian angel has always come to my rescue. He is about five foot two, wears a red robe, and carries a staff. He’s never let me down before. At the moment, he’s nowhere to be seen.

I am pushed backward, ever backward, and am powerless to act. I hear a voice I recognize coming from the direction of the buffet.  It is the cell phone lady clear as a bell.  “They’ve run out of food!” she hollers.  “That’s what I call poor planning!” Now is the summer of our discontent.

The whole deflated population turns and heads for the two street exits en masse.  I am carried along with the group. It is sweltering.  I am hungry. And I can’t believe I had to sit through the titles of essays about things like Dutch Elm disease and sardine canneries for no reason.

Outside on the front steps, the crowd begins to dissipate slowly. I am stunned.  I have no idea where my next free meal is coming from.

The next moment, in the glare of the sun, off to one side of the steps, I spot him, my guardian angel.  He is taking a long drag on a cigarette engrossed in the messages on his Blackberry.