Junior With Commitment Issues Abandons Food Truck After Making Small Talk With Owner Once

You wouldn't think it, Penn’s food truck scene sort of serves as a metaphor for its hookup culture. Like most intimate relationships on campus, the noon lunch rush is characterized by plummeting standards, avoiding eye contact, and hyping up how good it was to all your friends afterwards. Unfortunately, one food truck owner seems to have caught feelings for a particularly devoted customer, and the consequences look dire.

When Liam Kelly (W ‘19) woke up in a daze last Friday morning after a particularly thirsty Thursday, he instantly knew that the only cure was a bacon egg & cheese from his favorite food truck. He texted in his order and started digging up exact change just so that he could maximize the efficiency of this particular transaction, counting down the seconds until he could devour the sandwich in all its cheesy goodness. Sadly the universe had other plans.

When Kelly arrived at the truck its atmosphere seemed different. For whatever reason, there wasn’t much of a line and the owner seemed almost jovial. Greeting Kelly with an enthusiastic wave and a warm smile, Hank Oswald, the owner of the cart, asked the junior how his semester was going and if he had any fun plans for spring break. Kelly, who up until that moment had assumed that Hank was just a sandwich-making automaton, was thoroughly horrified. Suddenly this purely transactional relationship was becoming something a little too real. Kelly stuttered through an answer about how he was keeping his options open and didn’t want to get locked into anything long term over the break.

When Hank followed up with a statement on how excited he was for his daughter’s upcoming wedding, Kelly almost blacked out. Stumbling away from the cart and muttering an excuse about how he’d left his wallet at home, Kelly turned his back on Hank, knowing that this interaction would be their last. “I hate when they get clingy, but I guess there’s just something about me that’s irresistible,” a sneering Kelly told UTB while scrolling through his contacts for the number of his go-to burrito booty call.