May 21, 2024 ⁓ 4 min read
An anecdote from the life of Bob.
In 1981 I was living in the dorms at Illinois Institute of Technology. Just down the hall from me was the head RA (resident advisor for those of you who have not lived in dorms). His room was actually a suite of two rooms, each with a separate entrance.
One evening, I am munching on M&M’s (I had a big, 1-pound bag) while waiting for two friends to arrive so that we could go to the movies. John DeRocher, “Roach” as we called him, showed up. I offered him some M&M’s. He asked for two. That is oddly specific, but okay, I gave him two. He disappeared for a bit while I was talking to some other people. Eventually, Roach shows up and so does Zenon. I leave my M&M’s in the room and off to the movies we go.
When I return, there is a note on my door that says “See me! Tony”. I wonder what that is about. I grab my bag of M&M’s and head to his room. I walk in munching M&M’s. He is looking very stern. I ask him what is up. He says “YOU KNOW WHAT IS UP!”. I tell him that I don’t and offer him some M&M’s. He is just seething.
By now, you have probably figured out what had happened. At this point, I had not. Roach took those two M&M’s and shoved one in each lock of Tony’s doors. When Tony returned from class (he was a law student at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, part of IIT), he could not get his key in either lock and had to use a lighter to heat up his key to melt the M&M jammed into the lock.
So, here I sit offering him M&M’s while keeping a completely straight face. No way could I have done that had I known what had happened. He is completely gobsmacked at my arrogance in having the unmitigated gall to sit there eating M&M’s and to even offer him some.
He tells me what had happened. I start laughing and tell him it wasn’t me. He is still boiling mad and not believing me. It took me a while to convince him that I didn’t do it and I had no problem telling him that it was actually Roach. Of course, Roach denies it and says “don’t try to blame me for what you did.”
I don’t know that Tony actually believed me. Considering some of the other things we did to him, I wouldn’t either. We may or may not have done the following:
- Around 4 a.m., there was some disturbance and Tony came out of his room in his underwear to see what was going on. His door could auto-lock (none of the others could). I hit the button to activate the auto-locking and closed his door. I then disappeared. Tony said that he had to go up to the fourth floor (we were on the first) and wake up the duty RA and get her to unlock his door — all while in his underwear.
- While in Tony’s room, Zenon quietly unlocked Tony’s second door (that he never actually used). When Tony went off to class, we went into his room and rearranged all of his furniture. We were all summoned to the dean of students for that one. The dean was concerned that we had a master key. Nope, just sneaky.
At one point, the assistant dean of students did tell me that I was on double secret probation. That is another story for another time.