Bill Gets Ponded
For those of you unfamilar with the U of C campus, in the north part of the Quad there is a nice pond, called not too surprisingly, the botany pond. One of the long standing traditions of my fraternity, DU, is something called the "Commodore". Decades ago, DU had a nice yauht out on Lake Michigan. On Alumni Weekend, a reception would be held for all the Actives and Alumni. The duty of setting all this up each year & cleaning up afterwards, fell to the brother designated the Commodore. I guess one year, he forgot to tie up the yauht & it ended up sinking. So since they couldn't hold the reception there anymore, they threw him in the lake instead. Somewhere along the lines, the tradition became one of throwing the Commodore into the Pond after the Intra-Fraternal Sing. Each year's Commodore picks the following year. If you haven't figured it out yet, one year I was picked.
| So we sang, and afterwards everyone grabbed me. Being a big guy, it took a few of them. In this picture you can really only see my foot, but it's a big foot isnt' it? Just imagine the man attached to that. See Brian in the foreground? Notice he's not helping? He's a wuss. |
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| As they slowly (and painfully) carried me over, everyone congregated around the pond. See that group over to the left? That's the group that has me. |
| In I go. |
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And then the final moment came... the moment for the next Commodore to be chosen. Having felt bad for everyone having to carry me, I chose my friend, Alan Littmann, a skinny guy. (He's the guy in the blue shirt.)
And so my streak of always being the ponder and never the pondee came to an end. What the heck, it was fun though.