The sights and sounds of summer are approaching, and with them come hot, long days and more lacrosse jersey-clad people than you could have possibly known existed. The warm spring air has lazily descended on our lovely campus, and accompanying this seasonal change is my favorite day of the spring semester. Not only is it my favorite day, it is also one of the great traditions at this university: the opening of the outdoor pool on Maryland Day. It is a glorious day, when students from across the campus and beyond come to unwind around and in the shimmering pool.
It is almost as if students hear a voice calling their names, telling them to drop everything and come bask by the chlorinated water. Students abandon their books, researchers leave their lab coats and goggles in the lab, athletes ditch their pads and sticks, and homework assignments are brought to be completed at the pool on North Campus at the Eppley Recreation Center.
Seeing the pool on a spring day is a pretty amazing sight. At any given moment you can see people doing crazy acrobatics on the diving board, more girls in bikinis than Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition and me throwing down dunks at the pool basketball hoop on unsuspecting defenders. There is music pumping from the speakers as friends reunite in the water, new friends are made and crushes develop. The pool reaches capacity and, soon enough, a line forms. The unlucky outsiders are left with the same feeling of injustice as the Butabi brothers had while getting rejected from nightclub after nightclub in A Night at the Roxbury.
When I first arrived at this university and discovered the outdoor pool, my mind was blown. I saw tons of college kids hanging by the pool, sunbathing and just having a great time. This was completely contrary to my experience as a lifeguard at a pool in a seniors’ condo complex. Not that lifeguarding there was a bad job — it just got a bit, well, tired.
There was never anyone my age. There was never any music playing, and the old people never swam or did flips off the diving board. Come to think of it, there wasn’t even a diving board. Working there was great, but it was not the Outdoor Aquatic Center.
Even though the town pool in my neighborhood back home is fun, it is filled with toddlers, young children and watchful parents. It is like any other community pool in that way. What makes our university’s pool so special is that its attendees are almost exclusively college students. We take that for granted, but when you think about it, it is pretty amazing.
Going to our outdoor pool is what it must be like at the Playboy Mansion. There are games of volleyball and basketball, music and tons of young people. It really is like one big party. The only thing missing are women in bunny costumes and an old man in a robe who is truly “living the dream.”
Now, cue the DJ to play The Who’s “Baba O’Riley.” As my college career comes to a bittersweet end, I will always remember the outdoor pool and the beautiful things about youth: the innocence, naivety and carelessness.
Cory Kutcher is a senior kinesiology major. He can be reached at kutcher at umdbk dot com.
