spiker's blog: "College Days..."

At college we all lived in residence (during the academic year) for the entire four years - no exceptions.  Well, it was a military college after all, and they wanted us to benefit from the whole experience - not just the academics.

With so many college cadets all living in such close quarters together and all sharing similar academic stresses and military hardships, it's hardly surprising that any opportunity to upset the norm (and get away with it) was immediately acted upon.  Many of these events would present themselves in the form of practical jokes with varying degrees of complexity.

The commandant and his staff expected these practical jokes to happen and they were generally well received as long as no one got hurt, nothing was damaged beyond repair and the purpetrators would make good all damage or put things back to their original condition.

I remember returning to the college several times after a leave weekend to find someone's bedroom (bed, bookcase, desk, chair etc) perfectly made up on the lawn outside one of the residences.  So fun to marvel at these jolly japes but you always had a slight worry that it may actually be your bedroom out there, until you actually got to your room.  On another occasion (again during a leave weekend) twelve of us managed to move a fellow cadet's Austin Mini from it's place in the parking lot into one of the academic buildings through a set of double doors and up three flights of stairs, and left it on the third floor landing, to be discovered there on Monday morning.

However, those that live by the sword quite often die by the sword and the most ardent participants in these pranks often found themselves to get their just desserts, as karma found their sorry asses eventually.  An amusing example of such retribution happened to one of my Squadron colleagues one weekend - these japes mostly occured on weekends because we were all too busy running our asses off during the week.

Colin should have been the most paranoid japester in the college for all the pranks he had played on various fellow cadets and college staff, not all of which were well received by the victims.  However, he let his guard down when he went out drinking in town with several supposed friends one Saturday night. 

Everyone was buying him drinks to the point where he had passed out in the car on the way back to the college.  However, When he woke up the next morning, despite his horrible hangover, he immediately discovered that he wasn't in his comfy bed.  He found that he was flat on his back, stark naked, in a ditch beside the 401 highway which ran between Montreal and Toronto (and past Kingston).  He also found a clown suit and a five dollar bill. 

Well, they weren't picking up clowns on the 401 that day and he had no idea how far he was from Kingston - it was about 25 miles, so it took him all Sunday, with a thumping hangover, to return to the college. 

Vengence is sweet.