The university has played a cruel trick on the unfortunate souls who leave Madison for the summer months after classes have ended. This trick, of course, is having built the Wisconsin Union Terrace on campus.
The cruelty may not seem obvious, but this is only because it is so subtle. Students who stay in Madison over the summer get to enjoy the Terrace at its peak: long, warm days and nights spent gazing at the lake, drinking with friends and sitting in the most aesthetically awesome patio furniture ever forged on God's green earth.
The ones who come back to Madison in August or September, on the other hand, only really get to enjoy the majestic Terrace for a month or two. After that, the arch-fiend and bastard Winter arrives to spoil it all. The cool lake breeze? It soon becomes a freezing wind. The seagulls gently floating on air currents above you? They've migrated down south to crap on the windshields of cars parked a little closer to the equator. The boats you used to watch puttering about on the lake? Well hell, some idiot's gone and somehow replaced the surface of the water with ice.
Yes, friends, Winter comes every year at the behest of university officials to taunt you with a Terrace you can't use for the majority of the school year. Of course, by the time that nefarious polar malefactor leaves to make way for spring and the Terrace is up and running again, it's time to study for finals (or at least say you're going to study for finals and watch the Game Show Network instead) and then leave town in May.
So what can you do to keep the Terrace open all year long? Well, one supposes you could stand out there all winter with a hair dryer running full-blast to combat the cold, but be reasonable. You'd need at least, like, five hair dryers for that. Maybe six.
It would therefore be more productive to enjoy the Terrace right now, while you still can. If you get lunch at the Union, eat it outside and groove off the atmosphere. Tell your friends about all the bands the Union Directorate brings in to play, and do that Saturday night instead of staying in the dorms and seeing what happens when you mix Captain Morgan's, UV and Diet Mr. Pibb. (Answer: nothing good.) Do you have to read a whopping great Charles Dickens novel for an English Lit class? Read it by the lake and let the gentle rhythm of the waves soothe you. Or better yet, hurl the book into the lake, because, man oh man, do I hate Dickens.
Perhaps, then, the yearly freeze-out is not so much an evil prank as a reminder to enjoy every moment you have on the Terrace. For, as poets often remind us, one of the most essential properties of beauty is its fleeting nature, and the Terrace is indeed a beautiful thing. You could also make an argument that this is also a metaphor for your college experience or even life in general.
I'm far too busy at the moment to do so, however, so I'll have to pass on that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to send \David Copperfield"" to a watery grave at the bottom of Lake Mendota
Justin is a senior majoring in creative writing. He can be reached at morrisonbass@yahoo.com.
