Fact/Fiction Friday

During my orientation week before my freshman year of college, we of course toured the campus extensively and learned tidbits of trivia about the various things to see. There was a large fountain in front of the student center known as Frog Fountain. My RA mentioned that at least a couple times during each year, people would get the idea to put soap in it. She said usually they were caught, or else the fountain would just be a bit bubbly for a few days. It was a matter of pride to be able to really do a good soap job and people were always trying.
So all through my first year we noticed as people did indeed try soaping Mr. Frog. Most of the time it actually just ended up looking cleaner. Not much damage done.

My second year about six friends and I decided we could do a better job. We went and bought five gallons of lemon-scented Dawn, having determined in previous tests that this was the brand with the most bubbles. Then we got big plastic stadium cups, poured ourselves huge "drinks", and wandered outside to sit on the commons. We pretended to drink from our cups for about half an hour while we chatted, and then wandered over to sit on the edge of the pretty fountain. One at a time, we surreptitiously dumped our cups into the fountain jets and fled the scene.

The fountain was visible from our dorm room window, and we woke up to bubbles galore. Huge, snowy, billowy bubbles that almost filled the entire fountain. We won. The next few days we giggled as we listened to people talking about what a thorough job we had done, and the next week the fountain actually had to be drained and treated. Apparently we upset some sort of algae balance and they were worried it might be permanently ruined.

Oops. :)