One of things the guys in our recruit flight in Pontiac Sqn loved to do was prank one another, and sure enough they played pretty much every type of trick you could play on one another.  There were buckets of water perched precariously on the top of doors; water-filled doobs on beds that would explode when speared by a needle from a rigged light socket above; a fan that turned on as the door was opened and blew computer punch card chads all over the dorm room; and so on.  The thing was that there was never one without two, a.k.a  the Retaliation.  Usually, the culprits were quickly exposed, either because of the loud belly laughs shortly afterwards or because they were so proud of the lark that they just had to take credit, often compelled unsolicited to go in to great detail about the planning and the execution of said prank.

Interestingly, no one ever took me for the prank kind of guy, just like no one ever thought I would steal a base in softball.  Yet, maybe once a season, the guy whose door plaque read “Slow down, you’re moving too fast” would confound the opposing catcher by suddenly taking off towards second base.  After trying to search through his memory Rolodex for that highly unusual image of plodding old me attempting to steal a base, the catcher invariably would come up with nothing, and by then his throw was late.  The same kind of thing happened with me and my one and only prank.  I was not a big fan of them, but only because some could be very time-consuming to clean up after, and time was not something we had a lot of at this juncture.  I preferred the team approach, especially during what was the busiest time of our lives, but at the same time understood how they could provide some comedic relief during an otherwise very stressful period.

I seem to recall the “target” was Mark Beaulieu given his propensity for being the main perpetrator of such things.  I think he had been at Muldoons, and likely had come back a little bleary-eyed after consuming a few Schooners and singing one too many Farewells to Nova Scotia.  Earlier, I had carefully placed a water-filled doob on his bed, secured to the underside of his pillow with double-sided masking tape.  Sure enough, shortly after he went in to his room, I heard a rather loud shriek through his transom, no doubt after he lay his head on the pillow and then felt the cold water cascading down his back a split second later. That was followed by an even louder “WTF!”. Thing is, I never laughed out loud and certainly did not try to take credit.  However, after about a week, and after several of the guys had guessed incorrectly and retaliated against innocent colleagues, who responded in kind, I decided that I should confess to the original clandestine deed in order to prevent any further escalation of these misdirected “attacks”. That in turn sparked considerable surprise, since apparently I had been the last guy they would have suspected. I am not 100% sure why, and trust me I am not complaining, but no one ever tried to get me back.