Ordering food at TIP.

Ordering Food While at TIP.

By David Garcia and Paxton Swisher
M&M TIPsters

Choo-choo’s and Domino’s is commonly on the minds of the Duke TIP students. Although it seems easy to do, there can be many complications. “[Ordering food] is very hard,” says TIPster Mark McGuire about ordering food while at camp.

One of first problems you run into, as a TIPster ordering food, is timing. The food must arrive by 10:00 p.m. This means you have to call before 9:30 or else that means no food for you! We don’t want a starving TIPster, now do we?

Even if you can order the food on time, you still have to find the delivery guy. Probably every single TIPster can tell you about a time when they had to chase down a delivery boy. There have even been times when the delivery boy left before the food could be delivered. That’s just another lesson learned when you’re on your TIP vacation: be sure to be on time to get your food.

An easy fix for this problem is pay a lesser year to pick it up for you. They are very willing people when it comes to being paid.
But any TIPster can tell you that once you have your food, you’ll be the most popular person at TIP. Then everyone wants to be your “friend”.

Mobs are commonly formed to get the delivered food, and occasionally your food will be consumed by the giant, hungry mob. It’d be a good idea to have a body guard to get your food from the first floor up to your hall to protect your precious goods. The only down side: the body guard expects to get paid, so be sure to leave a bit for him.

When it comes to pizza, there’s the problem of the smell. A TIPster can smell pizza from miles away. So if you plan on ordering pizza, be sure to pack some masking cologne/perfume. The pizza box is another thing that needs to be hidden. Once a friend sees you had pizza that they didn’t get a slice from, there goes that friend. The easiest way to hide the box is putting it under your bed until the last day when everyone is too distracted by the end of tip to worry about who had pizza.
But after going through all these hardships, there’s always that reward of getting to eat your food. Once you take that first bite, you know that all that struggling wasn’t for nothing. Tasting the sweet, sweet Chinese food or the cheesy goodness of the pizza, you know ordering food at TIP is worth it.
Paxton Swisher, 15, is a sophomore at Parish Episcopal School in Dallas, Texas

David Garcia, 15, is a sophomore at South Grand Prairie HS in Dallas, Texas

photos by Victor Mancuso and Dustin Watson