Last summer, I took my mother to the Thirsty Turtle for lunch, after they inexplicably sent her a coupon for discounted crab cakes. She was very surprised when we walked into a bar, not a friendly take-your-parents-to-lunch type place, but I reminded her that my Aunt Sandra’s always raving about the lunch specials at Santa Fe. I’ve eaten a meal at every bar in College Park with a kitchen, but in my four years at the university (and 21 years living within a 15-minute drive of it) not once have I drank at one. Until Friday, that is. I told my friends to take me to the bar with the loosest freshmen girls, the loudest frat boys and the biggest douchebags waiting to start a fight because I breathed on them. Not long after, I was on Route 1 in my nicest popped-collar polo shirt with another popped-collar polo shirt on top, waiting to get into the Turtle. After four years of dutifully keeping the university atop the party-school rankings in my dorm room, I was heading for the big time.

Like Chicago, the Turtle is a place of the big shoulders. They are hung on girls in pastel skirts who are paraded in packs of five across a little stage at the front of the room like cattle at the state fair. They are worn by men, wearing patterned T-shirts and button-downs buttoned down to the waist, who swill Miller Lite and stand idly by as girls grind against them. The Turtle is a wild, bustling place, and I sought to make a serious fool of myself here, no matter who I saw or who I’d have to answer to come Monday morning.

Little did I know that my debut on the College Park bar scene would be so difficult. For all the impending pregnancies that the Turtle’s dance floor promises, I can’t see anyone coming here with the intention of seriously getting some tail. No amount of drinking – dollar drafts, two-dollar rails or the mysteriously-named “Garbage Bucket” – could stop me from laughing my ass off at the faces people made, the horrible attempts at looking cool and the fact that, at 21, I was probably the oldest person in the room.

But, you say, what was I expecting? The Turtle is a college bar in the college town of a college not exactly known for classy behavior. Yes, I know. I suppose I wasn’t expecting to hear a playlist lifted from my eighth-grade school dance. Following Juvenile’s “Back That Thang Up” with Sisqo’s “Thong Song?” Genius. I couldn’t have picked a better combination. Today’s freshmen are probably a little too young to appreciate Sisqo (they were, like, born in 2000, right?) but I know they want to tell their kids they “lost it” to that song.

Of course, all good things must come to an end. After 30 minutes of trying very, very hard to outdo the debauchery around me with the rudest dance moves I could do without elbowing anyone, I walked out of the Thirsty Turtle, never to return. (I should point out that I found their lunch specials equally disappointing, so I wouldn’t even come back for crab cakes.) And as I lay on the deathbed otherwise known as “entering the real world,” I remind myself that I had led a full life here in College Park, working hard, playing hard and even getting out of College Park on occasion.

But lo, I have now been into the jungle and out again, into the Friday-night chaos of Route 1. If there is one thing you must do before you graduate, even if you think you know just how far College Park can go, you too must cross the threshold of the Thirsty Turtle.

Dan Reed is a senior architecture and English major. He can be reached at reeddbk@gmail.com.