As I sit quietly stirring my Lucky Charms until I create a conglomerate of charms large enough for me to spoon into my mouth without prematurely consuming the marshmallow treasure, I am interrupted by a phrase that can only signal profound and imminent danger:

“It’s gonna be a darty.”

At the utterance of the word, I forget my little cereal bowl utopia, and my mind is clouded by  images of slip-n-slides coated in shaving cream, rainbow drinks sweating in condensation and a litter of Teen Beach Movie guys in tropical swim trunks carrying a bleach blonde goddess to be swung into an uncannily turquoise pool. Scenes from American Pie and Baywatch intermingle with UB40 and Beach Boys songs in my brain, and I envision myself as the confused bystander walking onto Surfrider Beach in the 1960s.

Although I understand that Stanford is nowhere near a beach town, some days Wilbur Field really undergoes some wack transformation. Also, Muscle Beach?! Come on. On sunny days I almost expect to see Larry the Lobster out there doing dips at an inhuman angle.

Anyway, the concept of the darty is not all about the beach for me, either. Simply thinking about beer pong beginning at two in the afternoon makes me feel a bit nauseated. Day drinking is reserved for New York socialites or Coachella attendees, not college students who have more essays than hours in a day. (I’d like to pause for a moment to note that, when I typed “essays” in the previous sentence, Google Docs gave me a spelling error squiggle with a suggestion of the word “issues” instead. She has a point.)

If Stanford students begin drinking in the early afternoon, the remainder of the day is spent frolicking around campus and then sleeping, creating an 24-hour unproductive rendezvous.

Also, imagine what you look like leaving a party while the sun’s still out and your mascara is smeared from cry-laughing. Now, this may not be a beautiful sight, but maybe that’s the magic. If everyone else looks shitty with you, do you really look shitty at all? (Yes, this was my motto for most of the last month of high school.)

When it comes down to it, the concept of “the darty” simply does not sit well with me. Like Teen Beach Movie, it seems messy, coated in cliches and far too unrealistic. I simply do not know if my soul is prepared for this quite yet. After all, these concerns shouldn’t be dire until summer vacations come around, right?

I may be convinced otherwise if I can actually manage to drag my ass to one of these things, but until then, parties will be reserved for nighttime.

Contact Malia Mendez at mjm2000 ‘at’ stanford.edu.