movie review: Waiting

The movie is about people who work in a restaraunt. It is full of very clever observations about what it is like to work in a restaraunt and the various kinds of relationships and dynamics that exist in such a setting. It's the kind of movie where you slap your knee and say "It's so true!." I know this because, like most people, I have had the amazing good fortune to have worked in a restaraunt at some point in my life. It was only for a couple of months, but that was enough for me. And basically my overall reaction to the entire experience was something along the lines of "So this is what the real world is like. Thank goodness I don't actually have to live in it." And that has basically been my opinion on the matter ever since-- there are people out there to whom waiting tables is their life. Tips and undercooked steakes and soda spills and rude customers are real problems to them, because that is how they supposrt their families and pay for school and get through the day and that is their life. I thought to myself that theirs were the real problems, and my problems were somehow more frivolous and selfish in comparisson. My papers and finals and beer pong were a product of my sheltered, priveleged existance. Basically I saw myself as in the bubble, while the whole rest of the world was outside it. But as I watched the movie Waiting, it started to occur to me that maybe everyone has their own bubble. Maybe the world is really more like a bunch of bubbles all squished together, and it is rare that anyone peer through their plastic walls into the others. We college students give ourselves a hard time about it, and we should, but what we shouldn't do it assume that we are the only ones guilty of this sin. Because I think that in the end, a civil war, a ten percent tip, and a midterm all amount to about the same. This may or may not be true.