Oval Beach

After not picking the Oval as my primary text for my RAP, I figured, if I can’t rhetorically analyze the oval formally, I’ll bitch about it informally.
Where do I begin? Hmmmmm. Well, I’m pretty sure you have all walked through the oval, at least once this quarter, or maybe you may be someone who avoids it in fear of being decapitated by a Frisbee. Don’t be ashamed, it’s a legitimate fear. I’ll give a brief summary. The said plot of land is oval shaped (go figure) with paved sidewalks haphazardly laid in all directions, almost with the intention of leading to every building on campus. Trees lightly speckle the lush green patches of grass, as the warm sun dances on each blade that surround the cool pools of black. Sounds peaceful, huh? Well…let’s add the main element of the oval. Everyone knows that this round expanse isn’t complete without the students. If you’d like to learn how many students actually attend this university, guess what? There’s a class for that! It meets between 12:18-4:30 every Friday on the oval. The GEC’s for the class include the ability to throw a Frisbee and Beaching 101. Clothes are optional and the class only meets under certain circumstances: it must be sunny and 70+ degrees. What do you learn about other than how many students you can pack onto one quadrant of grass? You can learn how to throw a baseball, eat a sandwich cross-legged on a blanket, time out a perfect tan with a case study on how NOT to apply sunscreen, and a special course for the ladies: how to “cover yourself” with 12 square inches of fabric. If you can’t tell, I won’t be majoring in “oval.” I admit, the oval is a fantastic place to meet up with friends, have lunch, or play some sort of laid back activity like corn hole or throwing around a football. However, a particular group of oval goers, with the wise words of scholar Peter Griffin, “really grind my gears.” It’s the young ladies and gentleman clad only in bathing suits, laying out. First of all, it’s a college, not a beach…there are teachers and faculty walking next to half naked students. It’s both an oxymoron and slightly inappropriate. These professionals don’t walk through your beaches, so maybe you should keep your clothes on while on their turf. But my peeve lies deeper than the scantily clad collegiates, it’s all the tanning. Yes, I know, I am among the vast MINORITY who has distain for the sun soaking youths, but whenever I see a girl throw on the SPF 5 tanning lotion and roll to her back like a freaking rotisserie chicken, I want to show her a picture of herself when she is 50 and she looks 80. And their desire to take a whirl around the color wheel of skin tons are simply because these girls “don’t want to look reflective” or “don’t want to look like vampires.” Well take advice from a girl who has been compared to a Cullen more than once in her life, after working a summer in a dermatologist’s office, I cannot stress enough the hardship that these bathing beauties are going to face in 20 years. If I had a dime for every time I had an older woman wish she could go back and smack her 20 year old, bikini donning self, I could blog for the rest of my life, on a yacht in the Caribbean. Yes, I sound bitter, yes, I may or may not sparkle in the sunlight, but no, when I’m 45, my face won’t match my leather handbag.