A Night in the Union.

I sit here in the Student Union, typing at my computer and tossing an occasional woeful glance at the clean fan blades above my head. It's rare that well though-out pranks fall through, especially when I've been planning them for this long. The last time a prank fell flat like this was back in high school, during the infamous Rapper's Delight Prank.

Back then, the plan was just as premeditated as this one had been. It was simple, quick, and clean - three excellent ingredients for a good prank. It involved two people, some privy knowledge as to the "all-call" code on the DHS intercom system, an old portable CD player, a burnt CD containing the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight," some headphones from the Dollar Store, and duct tape. The execution was straight-forward; Hans distracted Mrs. Walker with a pointless question, I breezed by looking purposeful (which, I suppose, I was) and entered into the back room where the morning announcements were made. I drew out the CD player, headphones, and duct tape and set to work. Within twenty seconds, I had taped the headphones to the "talking" end of the phone, hit PLAY on the CD player, and dialed the all-call code. Then came the hang-up; I turned the volume on the CD player all the to one side. The wrong side. Thus, the ding-dong-ding signaling an announcement yielded nothing but dead air waves.

People sometimes ask me what my number one regret in life is. Without hesitation, I cite this prank. It was just so close to being epic.

Now, perched upon a tall chair in the corner of the Union, I can add one more to the list. The clean fan blades taunt me from above. At least I escaped detection.

It was just as smoothly executed. This morning at exactly 2:50am, all the alarm clocks and cellphones in my room want crazy. Five minutes later saw my roommates and I rubbing the sleep out of our eyes and putting on all the necessary gear - warm clothes, bags of dumpstered* confetti, flashlights, and a note reading;

"Feb. 23rd, 2010 -
PLEASE do not turn on the fans until after 8:30pm, they are being re-wired."

At 3:25am, security left the Student Union to go on patrol. One benefit to a small school like CCU is that the security patrols at 3:00am aren't in a big hurry and aren't too observant. Trevor followed the Security truck around with a walkie-talkie while Eli, Phil, and I sprinted from the Ghetto to the Union. I went inside and set to work shutting off all the lights and gaining entrance to the back closet where the fan controls are. A few moments later, Eli and Phil came in through the door carrying a tall ladder. They set it up under the nearest ceiling fan and called out for me to hurry up. I finished picking the lock and hastily shut down all of the fans in the room, then speed-walked over to the waiting ladder.

As I shimmied up the rungs, Phil and Eli took up their posts at opposite sides of the Union, listening to Trevor's incoming reports on Security's whereabouts. Reaching the top of the ladder, I drew out a large bag of hole punches from my coat pocket and set to work. This was where the plan started to fracture. Since the blades are slightly tilted, confetti began sliding off the edges even as I put it on. It didn't help that I was in a big hurry and had adrenaline dancing through my veins. Once the top of all of the blades on the fan had been sufficiently covered with tiny pieces of paper, I climbed down and relocated the ladder.

"Security's over by Beckman," Eli reported. This mean we still had a good amount of time. I repeated the task of climbing the ladder, placing the confetti as carefully as I could, and then relocating until all of the fans had been hit. Just in time.

"He's headed back this way!" Eli said as I folded up the ladder. We paused for a moment to review our work. It was sloppy. A decent amount of confetti covered the floor of the Union. We hastily swept any off of table tops and chairs so it didn't look like it had fallen from high above - perhaps someone would guess that a punk strolled through the building and dropped it our of his pockets as he went.

Perhaps. But as it turns out, perhaps not. Our intended target was 3rd Tuesday Coffeehouse - the monthly showcase of CCU musicians and other artists. It draws a pretty big crowd into the Union, and we were going to turn on the fans in the middle of the second act, dusting everyone with tons of confetti. But sometime during the day, someone connected the dots and looked up at the fans. I passed by the Union at 3:00pm today and saw a custodian on the same ladder I had used the night before, holding a garbage can in one hand and a duster in the other.

Bummer.

So here I sit, looking at all the happy, oblivious people. The first act is wrapping up. I have the lock picking tools for the back closet in my coat pocket still. They have no idea what they avoided.

Oh well. On the plus side, I enjoy 3rd Tuesday just as much as any other CCU student.


Thanks for reading,

-Daniel K





*Dumpstered (adj) - an item obtained from a dumpster. Ex: We ate some dumpstered bread yesterday.