Saving Seats

Sarah graduated this weekend from Grad School, it was a really great weekend. She has worked really really hard to the past few years and deserves this degree for everything that it is. I am very proud of her. I have one quick story to share from the weekend about an exchange I had with a lady on Saturday morning before the graduation services started. My mom and myself were there one hour early since we came with Sarah whom had to be there early. We went in the sanctuary (it was held in a large church) to reserve a section of a row, because we had other family coming later and we wanted to sit together. So we spread out our stuff to stake claim to our area. I did not see anything wrong with this practice, somewhat common to me. Others in other rows were doing the same thing. As I was sitting there two ladies walked up and looked at me in the eye and paused. I told them very nicely that we were saving the seats for our family who were soon to arrive. This was not a very good response to these ladies. After another pause and a large eye roll, I received, "people usually do not save seats around here" followed with a, "we really don't save seats here". As if they come to a graduation weekly and follow along how many people save seats. As they walked off, they continued to complain about the seat saving practice that us two were taking part in. I just found this to be an odd exchange, I mean seriously. It is not like there were a couple other hundred seats that were free.