I have seen the enemy… and it was red. And not nearly as
bad as I expected!
The occasion was a college tour with my son of the
University of Utah. The home of the Utes!! Arch enemy of the BYU Cougars. The
only thing I really knew about them is that their black and red football
uniforms scared me a little bit when they were on the football field. But I put
on my big boy pants and drove my son into the mouth of the beast for a two hour
tour of the university. As a side note, the enemy validates parking for
visitors. That was cool!
Jeffrey and I were able to see lots of buildings with
names and gathering areas with names and trees with names! Yes, with the U of U
being a designated State arboretum, every tree was labeled, making it easy for
students to find their way around and conversations like this very typical…
“You’re looking
for the Life Sciences building? Easy! Take a left at Aesculus Glabra and it’s
about 125 pinecones past the Sequoiadendron giganteum”
“Thanks, Dude, you’re a lifesaver!”
Our group was walking by the police dept. and our tour
guide was explaining how safe it was on campus when 2 explosions rocked the
chilly air around us. We all ducked and looked around to see who the target
was. I don’t know why everyone looked at me but my first thought was that I set
off some BYU Cougar detection artillery. There was confusion in our tour guides
faces until one of them said it was probably just part of the Veteran’s Day
activities. Ahhh, that was a good cover story. I didn’t buy it but it seemed to
appease most in our group. A little while later in the building that houses
Kingsbury Hall, our guide was trying to explain something to us when a series
of 21 cannon shots exploded into the gray sky. The explosions were separated by
about 5 seconds each and it was really fun to hear our guide trying to talk as
fast as he could between blasts. Though they told us the artillery cannons were
shooting blanks, I couldn’t help but notice that they were pointed in the exact
direction of a rival university to the south.
The library was to coolest building on campus. One of the
guides, a sophomore, said he didn’t know much about the building because he
didn’t like reading (this appeared to give several prospective students some
hope) so handed the tour to the freshman guide who made it clear that she loved
this place. The library housed not only the library of books one would expect,
but so many study areas, public and private, that my mind was boggled! “Dad!!
Time to move on!”, my son pulled me out of the study area boggle and we then
saw the computer lab area. It was huge! The sophomore non-reading tour guide
told us that students could write on the glass walls of the public and private
computer lab study areas with dry-erase markers. We didn’t actually see anyone
doing that, but the non-reading tour guide assured us that if we did it, we
almost assuredly would not get caught.
After we saw all there was to see, the students were all
given a U of U pen to fill out a survey card. The pen looked really cool so I
tried to pretend I needed one too and I almost got one but when I reached for
it, my jacket parted enough to show the BYU shirt I was wearing. They asked my
son to come alone next time.
Before completely leaving, we decided to get lunch at a
little basement joint just off campus called The Pie. It sounded great and I
was excited… I looked at the menu and it seemed all they had was pizza. I asked
if they had Pecan, or pumpkin, or even strawberry-rhubarb but they just sneered
and asked my son what HE wanted. Very poor customer service, if you ask me. Why
didn’t they call the place something more meaningful, like The Pizza Basement?!
