The Quad of Earthly Delights

Life isn’t always all that pleasant on a college campus in the spring. Sure, the sky isn’t vomiting an inch and a half of ice on my car anymore, and it no longer gets dark just after lunch, but all, still, is not well. Besides pollen besieging my unprepared sinuses, and the horrible smelling white tree blooming outside of my window, I generally enjoy spring weather. But then they come out. As soon as the first warm breeze wafts its way through town, the rumble of trampling bare feet heading towards the quad can doubtlessly be felt on the far outskirts of town. Overnight, the typically serene and green field on campus becomes an amusement park. I’m honestly surprised the school doesn’t set up pretzel stands.

I’ve talked about this with people in the past. Typically I’m just told that I’m too easy to irritate, which irritates me somewhat. How are these people dirtying up my picturesque quad not widely considered a nuisance? On a sunny day in April the quad looks like a landfill has manifested itself into human form and taken up residency. At first glance it seems like quad-goers simply wish to enjoy the warm sun after a long and unpleasant winter—but no, their true motives are far more sinister. I’m convinced that they’ve taken root on the quad for the sole purpose of annoying me.

This matter goes far beyond simple clutter. The increased number of people slows mobility, and a few hundred thousand people on the quad doesn’t exactly make for the ideal environment for a swift bike ride. So now I have to walk. Which is okay in and of itself, but then I have to deal with people. Now that campus swims with chipper students on a warm weather high, everyone wants to be more social. So the typical “How are you?” from a classmate transforms into genuine curiosity on their part. This is typically bad news for me. Aside from the concept of spiders laying eggs in my brain, nothing terrifies me more than the act of small talk. Whenever I need to speak generally with someone with whom I’m not completely familiar, the social portion of my brain simply sizzles and shuts down leaving only hundred-year-old baseball statistics.

“Kris! What’d I miss in class today? The weather is sooo nice.”

“Did you know that Nap Lajoie batted .376 in the 1904 American League season, Callie?”

“My name is Melissa.”

It just isn’t pretty.

Direct interaction with people doesn’t even bother me as much as some of the indirect interactions which occur while I walk along the quad. First of all, there’s the ever-present threat of being hit in the head by a stray baseball, football, or frisbee. It seems that merely taking up space on the quad isn’t enough for these people; they apparently need to throw things over large groups of people as well. Not only do I have to look out for people who may want to talk to me, but I also have to worry about getting a concussion. It’s like walking through a war zone. If a ball happens to land near you, they also expect you to retrieve it for them as if you wanted to play with them but just didn’t realize it yet. You threw it and missed, asshole—you can get it. I’m telling you, there should be a law.

A lot of people also use this opportunity to practice their instruments en masse. Trying to work out the chord progression to “Crash Into Me”? Take it to the quad. Need to go through your didgeridoo scales? Quad. Attempting to adapt “Dani California” for acoustic guitar, Irish kettle drum, and bongos? The quad is both your practice room and stage. So now I am not only being physically and mentally assaulted by quad-goers, but I’m also forced into listening to their crappy college music. I once saw a person sitting high on the steps of Wilson Hall loudly and sloppily strumming out what I think was “Hotel California” to the entire student body. Where does this impulse to perform come from? These people impose their music on others and nobody can do anything about it. Simply complaining to them makes things worse, because then you’re accused of giving off bad vibes, and that’s just no good for karma, man. Someone please shoot me.

I suppose one advantage that comes from the Garden of Earthly Delights that the quad becomes in the spring appear as if by magic: puppies. These little guys run around and trip over their awkwardly proportioned legs, only to get up to chase a leaf that’s blowing in the wind. Cute little rascals. But then their owners come after them. The people who bring a dog to the quad are never what you would expect by looking at the dog. A small, brown ball of fluff probably belongs to a fraternity-type who goes by the name Smokestack or Gym Locker—and the worst part comes when you find out that Smokestack has named his dog Guinness or some other form of alcohol. If anything, something like this makes me feel sorry for the dog. How would you like to go through life with a name like Miller High Life or Captain Morgan? The only thing that I see in these animals’ future is death by being force-fed grain alcohol—and something about that just doesn’t sit well with me. Also, these guys don’t seem to like it when other males pay attention to their puppy. I assume it’s because it distracts their little Corona from his true purpose: to lure in women and hook them like large mouth bass. Now I’m no animal rights activist, but that doesn’t seem like the ideal reason to invest in a dog.

Now perhaps I’m just being a curmudgeon. But seeing the quad treated like it’s the beach, complete with people sporting bathing suits (in the mountains), bugs the hell out of me. It doesn’t even have to be sunny or even warm for this phenomenon to occur; I regularly see a girl in her bikini on a sixty-degree, mostly cloudy afternoon. It’s as if the mere idea of warmth drives these people into whatever patches of sun they can find. And that’s okay I suppose; my torment will pay off when I can chuckle at their skin cancer.