I've probably shared this story before, but I had a long day of work and I can't come up with any of the usual brilliance. (Yes, I am truly weary when I refer to Goulash as the usual brilliance.)
Freshman year back at the ol' alma mater, I was roommates with the Paddington Bear. We got along together well, once I finally agreed to start sleeping in my own bed.
Bit of trivia: Paddy was not my first roommate. Residential Life actually assigned me to someone else, another freshman who happened to be battling a few different forms of cancer. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but my mom wisely realized that after a few dozen Natural Lights one random night, I'd probably collapse on his heart monitor and go to jail for involuntary manslaughter. I got reassigned before move-in day, and thus the Lioi/Powell dynasty was born.
We lived in a dorm called Winn, which was right in the midst of the freshman quad. When we looked out the window, we saw some lawn area and then a bunch of other dorms. Well, one night, I was sitting right by that window, typing away. Was I working on an assignment, or perhaps writing a sternly-worded letter to the New York Times about the East Timor situation? Unlikely; I was probably playing Ken Griffey Jr Baseball on my Super Nintendo emulator.
There I was, computing by the window. Patrick happened to be in the shower, and he was a late showerer so this was definitely sometime in the later part of the evening. With no warning whatsoever, the window right next to me exploded and something whooshed past my face, slamming into the desk. I turned on the light to get a look at the projectile and I couldn't see anything. Did the window just explode? Is that something that windows do?
Thinking quickly, I said, "Stay in the shower, Patrick." I paused. "I don't understand what's happening out here." That was much more succint than actually explaining the scene as I saw it.
Broken glass be damned, I continued to look for the projectile. It was dark under the desk, and I resorted to crawling under it and grasping with my hands. There at the very far corner of the desk, I found it: a giant rice krispie treat that had been rounded into a ball. That sum'bitch was big, hard, and it had clearly been molded just for window breaking.
I marched across the hall to the RA's room and flung open his door. "Somebody's busting our windows with rice krispie treats," I said.
He didn't even give me a chance to explain. He ran out the door, then to our room, threw open the door to the balcony, leapt it, and ran out into the quad. Standing before him was the Krispie Chucker, just laughing and pointing at our window. Our RA grabbed him by the neck of the shirt and tackled him. It took our RA all of 12 seconds to do this; he was like a gazelle, motivated by the fury of vengeance. Halfway to the ground, the Krispie Chucker stopped laughing and instead gaped his mouth into a half frown/half sob. As he hit the ground, I heard a mournful "Owwwwrrrrfffff". It was one part "ouch", one part "I was only goofing around", and one part "I now respect the destructive power of rice krispie treats".
Unfortunately, Paddy was in the bathroom the whole time so you'll just have to believe all of this.
Posted by Cody at August 16, 2006 7:46 PM