This was going to be my greatest column ever. Years from now, when I would be sitting on my gold-plated yacht, watching the sunset as the Swedish women’s shuffleboard team put on a private clinic, I would say to myself, “I’m glad I bought that chocolate hammock.” I would have also pointed to this column as the springboard to all my career aspirations.

This column would’ve had it all. It would’ve started with an online conversation I had with my cousin about “drama” and referenced Wegmans supermarkets, women, the square root of 73,532, deodorant, the boy band O-Town and, to complete the MacGyver motif, a paper clip.

You would have laughed, you would have cried, you would have become nauseated – and not, for a change, because of my picture. This column would have been supportive and kept you feeling warm and cozy all day, like a good pair of boxer briefs. What’s more, after you read it, you could have used it to wrap a very, very small box.

All of this would have happened – I can almost taste that hammock – except for one thing. The day I was planning to write this column was a particularly nice one, the first real spring day of the semester. And as I was walking outside to class, soaking it all in, I saw it. Twice.

Socks with sandals. Two guys, each wearing one of my biggest pet peeves.

I don’t know where my hatred for socks and sandals began, but if I spent an equal amount of time fixated on solving rising tuition costs, we would all be going to school for free right now. Perhaps it was when, as a young lad, I read the Bible, specifically Leviticus 84:3-9. I don’t remember all of the details from the passage, but it involves a guy named Dave who wore socks and sandals, and it ends with, “And the Lord smote Dave.”

Living in the dorms freshman and sophomore year, I had great debates with friends on this issue. Despite my objections to socks and sandals, I argued it is okay to wear the combination in your own room and to the bathroom at the end of the hall because the bathroom is an extension of your room. Some disputed my view, saying socks with sandals are impermissible under any circumstance, while most yelled at me because it was my turn to bet in our poker game.

In the time since, I have (thankfully) come around on the issue. If I have to take our garbage to the trash chute down the hall from my room, and I am wearing socks, I will either put on slippers or take my socks off and put on flip-flops. As I type this, I am trying to put my sock-covered feet inside my sandals, but my feet keep instinctively slipping out, as if sock touching sandal causes an electric shock. Even when I manage to keep my foot in the sandal for a few seconds before the “eww” factor kicks in, it just does not feel right.

The reasons became clear when I took my socks off and slipped my bare feet back in my sandals. (Lest you think I’m a hypocrite, I do not wear shoes without socks. I could list for you the few things more smelly and uncomfortable, but my mom’s reading this.) Sandals are lying out on the Mall on a sunny afternoon. Sandals are shorts, T-shirts and a good pair of sunglasses. Sandals are only a few weeks of school left. Sandals are summer and baseball and barbecues and, my favorite, sand between your toes. Sandals represent the end of another cold, long and dark winter and the promise and potential of a beautiful spring. It’s a liberating and exciting feeling, the type of feeling you want to share with the world, not sully with fabric.

So if you are walking around the campus and see people wearing socks and sandals, stop them, smile and politely tell them they are committing an egregious error, the likes of which could ruin the delicate fabric of the society we all work so tirelessly to maintain. Wearing socks and sandals is like trusting a guy with a ponytail – you just shouldn’t do it.

But if that person knows a member of the Swedish women’s shuffleboard team, please give him or her my number.

Danny Jacobs is a senior journalism major. He can be reached at jacobs@umd.edu.