Walking around UT, I often notice a sense of monotony in the daily lives of the students. We do our best to lead exciting day lives in the way that we dress and carry ourselves, but there’s only so much excitement you can bring to the day when you follow the same schedule week in and week out. When students find interesting ways to liven up the day it helps ease the pain of the monotony.
Ryan Day, President of Student Productions, was drawing quite a crowd last friday afternoon in Plant Park. Day, barefoot and wearing a hard to miss neon shirt, was balancing and walking across a long bungee tightrope he had strung between two trees next to the river. A older couple watched from a nearby bench and two high school age girls and who I presumed was their father watched leaning on a close tree.
Not too phased by the attention, Day addressed his fans once after a loss of balance caused him to hop off the tightrope giving them a quick “how’s everybody doing?” before taking a quick drink from a water bottle and climbing back on the rope.
I managed to interrupt him once to ask some questions about the activity.
“I started last semester,” he said “but I haven’t done it in about 7 months until this week.”
I then asked him if he had had any issues with security and apparently they had gotten there before I had.
“Today is the first day I’ve ever had trouble with the school. Security came up to me and told me that it was unsafe and that I had to take it down,” he said “But I called the security office and they sent a supervisor over and told me that it was fine. They said if I ever had any more trouble I could call them and they’d take care of it.”
FInally, I asked him why he was doing this.
“It’s relaxing and it takes a lot of focus and helps with your balance and leg strength but I mostly just come out here to spend time outside.”
I didn’t want to distract him any longer than I had, so I said thank you and was about to walk away when he asked,” You want to give it a try?”
I gave it my best, but after needing help just getting on the bungee, I couldn’t even take one step before my foot buckled and I had to leap off.
Though my tightrope career ended before it could even begin, it was cool and refreshing to see someone defying the monotony of the school day.
Mia Glatter can be reached at mia.glatter@theminaretonline.com.