Getting Even

One student s inspired prank demonstrates that revenge, even when sweet, can sometimes stink. BY

ANIMAL HOUSE, FOR ALL ITS ADO- lescent humor, remains a favorite of mine for many reasons—probably most because I believe I had earned a spot in the film.

Chris Miller '63 wrote the script based on his experiences in his fraternity, and I recognize a few of the mutual friends he immortalized in the classic parody of drunken toga parties and dissolute debauchery.

My friend George, for example, who often ran naked through the halls of my dorm in a stupor, once pursued a townie, spending time with her under the stars on the gridiron before he discovered she was 13. He ended up in the film.

Chris claims that he based the character of Pinto on himself. But I knew Pinto was based on George, though many of you claim Pinto was modeled after a buddy down the hall.

My college pranks, which I thought highly original at the time and later considered natural for the film, never made it as far as the cutting-room floor. But because they have been a well-kept secret for more than 40 years, I thought you might like to know a little more about them.

They begin with Scott, my roommate, who, true to his name, was a penny-pinching lad of Scottish blood, very studious and scorning irreverence of any kind.

For my part, I pinched pennies, not because of any genetic proclivity but because my allowance was minimal and working as a dishwasher in the dining hall hardly helped fund any excess. So we pooled our proclivities and circumstance, and we came up with plans to save a considerable sum of money by forgoing the extravagance of our prepaid meal tickets.

The inspiration came to me when we took a table near the end of the conveyer belt that carried half-empty trays along the perimeter of the cafeteria into the kitchen for processing. I noticed that every 20th tray or so carried an untouched meal into the maw of oblivion, the interior of the kitchen, where each plateful of unwanted and often untouched food was scraped into large pails destined for the pigsty.

I invited Scott to join me in discreetly helping ourselves to the untouched meals, and when we assured ourselves the plan was viable, we slipped into the dining hall without having our dinner cards punched, anticipating a large dividend at the end of the term for meals unclaimed.

That worked for a while, until the mistress of the hall got wind of our scheme and kept a wary eye out for us. She ushered us out on more than one occasion, but we managed to elude her most of the time by posting friends up the line who could warn us of her presence.

The hugely successful operation, the buzz of the campus, came to a screeching stop when Tiny, a 300-pounder of gigantic appetite, plagiarized our idea and one-upped us by sitting at the next table up the conveyer belt and wolfing down whatever appealed to him.

Which was just about anything.

He was delighted at his coup—his smirk was unavoidable—and we were left furious and famished. But there was nothing to be done, as Tiny always used his meal ticket to gain entry and we were hardly in a position to rat on him for his excesses.

So we adopted Plan B, which was simply to eke out our sustenance from a large plastic cooler that we placed between our desks while our unused dining coupons accumulated. Once a week we would fill the larder with staples from the local grocery, warming edibles on a hot plate when necessary. The plan committed us to long stretches of fasting, but to celebrate a successful week of diminished diet wed steam lobsters in a tin can when the local purveyor drove by on a Friday.

That too worked for a while, until our friends learned about the treasure chest and paid us visits, ostensibly to discuss esoteric subjects, but in fact to subtly lift the top of the cooler and withdraw an apple, pear or banana while pretending they had no idea they were stealing our next meal.

Then came midterm exams and, under the pressure of studies, we sealed the cooler—at the time it was full of eggs and bacon and a rapidly melting block of ice—and returned to the College dining hall, using our tickets for our daily fare.

Our good friend Ray, however, was unaware that the free lunch in our room was no longer on offer.

And so it was on a warm sultry day that I approached Middle Mass, the classic red brick dorm with green shutters where Scott and I shared a fourth-floor room, only to be met at the door with a smell so putrid it could, have survived only in the Alpha Delta house. The odor increased in virulence as I ascended the stairs and, in dread, turned the corner at the top of the stairwell to find the doors to our room and the bathroom inside wide open.

There I discovered the shower in full stream, targeted at the cooler. Its top was hanging to one side, exposing a green mold-like substance that frothed up from the cooler and the shower drain like the slime from Ghostbusters. It was clear to me that Ray had just paid us a visit and, finding us not at home, had nonetheless dipped into the former honey pot, only to find inside the ultimate weapon of mass destruction—a rasher of putrefied bacon.

The thought of Ray racing to the bathroom with the cooler in tow, blindly twisting the knob of the shower, setting the cooler beneath it and running pellmell from the dorm still delights me.

But as others in the dorm, hands to their faces, joined him outside hoping for a breath of fresh air, I sealed the cooler and quietly headed for the cemetery that lay behind the dorm. Not finding a fresh grave in which to bury the evidence, it occurred to me that I had actually been blessed with a weapon of retribution for every slight I had ever endured at the hands of preppies and posturing pedants.

Like an agent of the devil I prowled the campus, peeling off one strip of putrefied bacon at a time and placing each in the most unlikely places in the empty rooms of my adversaries—the innersprings of their mattresses, the interiors of their guitars.

But when I went to collect my reward, the anticipated awe of those struck by the most hideous odor imaginable, I found no satisfaction: All the victims appeared to have taken an oath of ignorance of the scourge that had mysteriously descended on them.

Several weeks later as I was riding on the Glee Club bus, one of the intended victims took a seat next to me and told me about the incredible odor that had inexplicably overwhelmed one of his friends in a room down the hall. As he recounted the story I pretended fascination but privately realized I had misdirected my retribution and wrapped the evil bacon around the innersprings of an innocent.

"You don't know how lucky you were," I've often thought. "But I'm going to get it right for Chris' prequel."

FRED GRAY is a staff writer for the Petoskey(Michigan) News-Review. Reprinted withpermission from the News-Review.