BenCrowder.net

Once upon a time, early last year, a satellite dawdled along several thousand miles above Provo and took this shot of the Joseph F. Smith Building here on BYU campus (courtesy of Google Maps):

The picture’s a little old, admittedly, but it’s enough to set the stage for what comes next. You’ll note the blue circle in the center. This is not in fact part of the ground, but a piece of digital wizardry cooked up in Photoshop. It also happens to mark the fountain, which was as dry as the New Mexican desert when they took this photo. Today it burbles and gushes with the best of them.

The fountain, however, is not the focus of this story.

A young man is.

We don’t know the young man’s name, so we’ll call him Bizarro. Yesterday, a couple of hours before sunset, Bizarro felt uncomfortably hot. We do not mean that he was burdened by uncommonly good looks and an overwhelming array of offers from GQ and Calvin Klein, of course. Sweat beaded upon his forehead, mixing in with the little particles of dirt that had collected on his face like moths to the back porch light. His red shirt and black shorts clung to his skin. Weeding was hard work. Bizarro was exhausted.

But then he got an idea. It trickled into his mind like honey oozing out underneath the lid, sticking and becoming sweeter the more he thought about it. Would it work? He had to try.

He left the weeds and dirt, clocked out around five, and strolled over to the inner court of the JFSB. Most people were gone by then, he reasoned. And the windows were probably tinted anyway.

There it was, tucked up against the grass and flowers: a fountain of clear, pristine, deliciously wet water. Bizarro felt thirsty.

But drink is not what Bizarro did. No, he had something far more daring in mind. Walking through the water around behind the largest granite slab, he sat down. No one could see him there, he thought.

Five seconds later, a casual observer in one of the hallways saw a blur of red fly up from behind the slab and onto the grass, followed by a black projectile and then a white volley. This casual observer had also observed Bizarro’s entry into the court.

Now, this may be acceptable behavior in Europe, but BYU is not Europe, not by any stretch of the imagination. But we digress.

Bizarro was enjoying his nice bath, free of all cares and worries, when another young man — a student — approached.

“Um, what are you doing?” The young man, who we’ll call Butch, had a vague look of concern etched on his face.

Bizarro smiled. “Taking a bath.”

“Oh.” Butch frowned. “Oh. Well, I think the, um, police are coming, so you might want to get dressed.”

“Really?” said Bizarro. And he got dressed in time to give the policeman a kindly reception. The policeman returned his kindness by escorting him out and autographing a piece of paper for him.

[Ed: This is not fiction -- he did indeed bathe naked in the fountain yesterday -- but I don't know anything about him, as I'm not the one who saw him there. Thank heavens for that; I would've been scarred for life. :) Nor do I really know what happened with Butch and the policeman. I plead artistic license.]