Kids, its hot in Chapel Hill. Im talking temperatures that are draconically unseasonable over here. Today it was 90 degrees. Yesterday, it was 95. The day before that? It was one million degrees.

Anyway, Ive taken to walking to and from school on such lovely, scorching days, as riding my bike my only other transportation option would leave me drenched in sweat before I was 50 yards away from my house. Seeing as Id rather not look like I swam to school, biking has become a less and less viable option.

Really, walking is not too bad. Ive got longer to listen to my iPod, more time to take in nature, more time to people watch, and most importantly, I have a chance to observe people acting absolutely crazy. Im not talking crazy as in wild, but instead I mean crazy as in people doing things that could get them locked up.

Todays walk home began just like any other. My three-hour screenwriting class had just ended, and I was ready to plug in the earphones, ignore the world, and just get home and take a nap.

That all changed at 4:12 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, when I passed the fraternity houses on the outskirts of UNCs campus. What I saw will stick with me to the grave. It was a fully-grown frat guy a bro, if you will sitting in an inflatable childs swimming pool.

Now on its own, such an incident is not that bizarre. Frat guys tend to think that doing things that are overtly ridiculous is the highest form of humor, so Johnny Bro just hanging out in a kiddie pool wasnt out of the realm of possibility. But it wasnt just that he was in that pool. It was that he (a) was still wearing his polo shirt despite the fact that he was sitting in water up to his chest and (b) looked sad.

I puzzled to myself. What conditions would have led this dude to this predicament? How can one, as a fully-grown human being, be sitting in a childs swimming pool and project a palpable moroseness?

I have a theory, if you will allow me the indulgence of imagining a scenario: Johnny Bro, just having been told that he will have to repeat the 15th grade (this is what I like to call junior year in college), was sad. He was walking, head down, lost in thought, completely unaware of his environment, straight through Frat Court. He tripped on the kiddie pool, which had been set as a trap by a rival fraternity who had anticipated such a situation. Johnny Bro felt like being inundated at this particular moment was a just punishment for him. He wallowed in both his sadness and the water in the pool. He considered his life. Then he got out and changed his polo shirt.

The end.