Ahh Childhood Pranks: The Assault on Yale (505 hits)
Category: HumorRating: 0.4 on 6 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by "The HurriCrane" (View user info) at 2005-01-31 21:10:29 EST
The following is the unelaborated truth. Every detail is aptly described and unembellished.
When I was a young lad, between Freshmen and Sophemore years of high school, my parents sent me to north to New Haven Connecticut to a summer program in Yale University. Being a summer program, all of the dormitories were vacant and we had the pleasure of staying in the old campus dormitories. Most of my friends and I occupied a few rooms of Durfee Hall, which constitutes one side of the Old Campus quad. One evening a few weeks into the program, my friends and I were up in a suite common room playing cards and hanging out. We were bored and outside, in the warm, summer air, many people were lounging around and a small crowd was assembled outside one of the main entrances to the dorm, waiting for a student who had been kicked out to emerge and say his fairwells.
I'll describe the simple layout of Durfee hall to give you a better picture of what I have and will recount. Durfee hall is a built in a simple, rectangle. One of the long sides borders the quad while the other borders a main road. The two narrow sides form alleys with adjacent buildings. Only the long side bordering the quad has any entrances. The four entrances span the length of the side and are equally spaced. All of the students gathered to see the departing student were gathered around the first entrance, going from left to right. Our card playing group was between the second and third entance on the third story, in a room with a window on the same side as the entrances. There is a wide sidewalk between Durfee Hall and where the grass begins and a short wooden fence seperating the two, on which many students were sitting, chatting.
As the cards got dull and we got bored of joking around, a few of the less-responsible students and myself decided to have some fun. A chubby kid with short, jet-black hair named Jason was digging around in his pockets out of boredom and pulled out a balloon. Though it should have been blindingly obvious, as he flicked the rubber balloon around, it didn't occur to him what could be done. I, being the only one in the group that had ever done anything wreckless or stupid in the innocent child way, decided to indoctrinate them and show them how to cause mischief. Though most of the group was mature and responsible, I managed to assemble a three or four of them to go with me and see what we could do.
We decided to scope out our target first. The dormitory was mostly empty and we didn't expect to find to many people to get in our way. Our problem was the large number of people on the quad who could potentially witness it. Because the balloon would be carried straight down, we needed to find somewhere laterally distant from where we were dropping it. Since nobody would be likely to be paying enough attention to where we'd be dropping it from, it didn't really matter what story we dropped it from. Looking out the window, we noticed the crowd awaiting the emergence of the kid departing the program, who was inside the office, a room next to the first entrance. Perfect.
We went into the suite bathroom and filled up the water balloon. We stretched it over the nozzle and turned on the water. Quickly we noticed this balloon, which was a leftover from a science-class experiment, was very high quality. It sat in the sink and slowly got bigger and bigger. We pinched the rubber every so often to test how tight it was becoming, yet it never seemed to yield any slack. The balloon kept growing bigger and bigger. Soon it consumed most of the linoluem sink, an continued to grow as we had the tap on full power. Eventually we decided to halt the growth of this behemouth, simply so we would be able to get it out of the sink, be able to carry it, and be assured that the tie on the end would hold the sheer volume of water. It was still a very hefty load. I carefully slipped my arms under the monster and lifted it out of the sink, careful not to tear the rubber on the tap.
As we emerged from the the bathroom, we discovered a problem with our plan. The closer we got to the windows over the crowd, we closer we'd be getting to the crowd, who were there to await the emergence of someone in the office. This presented a problem, since the administrators were likely to be in greater quantity at this end of the building. It would be a bit too suspicious to be caught with the massive water balloon and just as bad to be caught fleeing the scene or even witnessed. Ideally, we did not want to be seen by anyone, though most would be unable to identify us or catch enough of a glimpse of us to recognize us later. We decided to compromise between the security of being far from where my friends were hanging out and where we'd return, and the risk of being caught on the move. We decided we would use the next suite on the same story, so we could return as soon as possible, and then wait and see if they were angry enough to conduct a search, in which case us culprits would discretly leave the building or retire to our dorms.
I left the suite where we were playing cards to scout the hall and the next suite. All was clear. I returned to the dorm and took the balloon. A team of three of us, giggling madly, ran into the next room, stood low to avoid being seen and quickly tossed the behemouth out the window and ran like crazy across the hall and back into the friends' dorm. We were laughing like crazy and nervous as hell to go to the window. Casually I walked to the window, and peeked at it from the side so I could see the destruction. From my narrow viewing angle, all I saw was the edge of a water crater. The outline of the impact was clear, though all I could see was an edge. The fifteen foot wide sidewalk, onto which plummetted the balloon, only showed a small portion of the crater, before the water was distorted and not visable in the grass. The edge made a very gradual curve so I knew the devastation must have been terrible. The few people I could see where staring at the building, their eyes tracing up the builing to where it had been dropped. Administrators who had been on the quad where sprinting towards the building so they could catch the culprit. "Oh shit," I thought.
I casually left the room and walked out onto the quad and everything around a 25 foot radius of the impact point was drenched. I found a Spanish friend of mind standing by himelf on the quad staring at the building. "Wass it yoou?" he asked in his strong Spanish accent, "I woon't tell anywon"
Fearing somebody might hear I said, "No, what happened?"
He explained to me somebody had dropped a water balloon but I think he knew it was me by my awkward and fidgety manner. I was nervous and and excited, the adrenaline was still coursing through my veins, and I decided I'd go back up to my suite to call a few friends of mine to describe it. I retuned back to the dorm and into the dark, seclusion of my room and sat down. A knock sounded on my door and an adult voice said my name. I opened the door and to my dismay, it was an administrator. He led my down the the very same office that had just held somebody being kicked out of the program and began to interrogate me. I felt like a POW and acted very politely and did my best to implicate as few people as possible and taking the blame on myself as much possible, only admitting I had received teh balloon from someone else. They asked what was in the balloon. I reassured them it was only water, thinking they might suspect urine or some other foul matter. Earlier that day, though I was unaware, a girl had sustained a mild concussion when somebody through a watter balloon at her with a rock inside. When they informed me of this, I hearily apologized and said I would not have gone through with it had I known that, and they seemed to take it and let me go with a warning. I returned to my friends and it turned out they were to blame since they had turned me in when the administrators came up. Lousy assholes.
What we did wrong was drop the balloon too close to our "hideout" and trusted our friends too much. The next day, which was our last day, I found myself in the same office, this time for not doing a final project we were supposed to do. Oh well, at least I had a good time.
The picture below is accurate.
User Reviews
Submitted by transhuman (user info) at 2005-02-01 00:03:39 EST (#)
Ranking: -1
Submitted by MrWillard (user info) at 2005-01-31 22:18:52 (#)
Ranking: -1
Swing and a miss
Submitted by Mister_Fahrenheit (user info) at 2005-01-31 23:45:05 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Tastycat (user info) at 2005-01-31 22:32:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Durfee hall is a built in a simple, rectangle.
--------------------------------------------------
I stopped reading here. Why the unnecessary comma?
Submitted by MrWillard (user info) at 2005-01-31 22:18:52 EST (#)
Ranking: -1
Swing and a miss
Submitted by Robert_of_Duluth (user info) at 2005-01-31 22:10:41 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
yeah did you go?
Submitted by NoahsArk (user info) at 2005-01-31 21:54:47 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Explo?
now I'll read it