66 Jay Rasmussen

Living in Sittner Hall with four hundred guys means that life is never really dull, in fact to keep things from getting too out of hand it is best to establish certain boundaries of trust and decorum. Picking your friends wisely even in a dorm where a majority of the guys come from respectable homes means you still might have a practical joker listed among your friends.

It wasn’t far into the year that Jay Rasmussen had established himself as the number one practical joker of Sittner. It was rumored that Jay at a party had spiked the punch with methylene blue so everybody’s pee had turned frighteningly green. The list was long, but the real clincher that resulted in payback was Limburger cheese carefully hidden in a heat register, and the resulting stench that took days to locate.

Payback time had finally arrived and the perfect opportunity now presented itself, he had taken a weekend leave and wouldn’t be back till Sunday evening. They worked in shifts wadding newspaper up into balls and throwing them into his room. This continued until the room was filled to the ceiling, the last remaining paper balls were thrown through the transom above the door so the space behind the door was also completely filled.

What a surprised look on Jay’s face when he finally arrived late Sunday evening and could hardly open the door to his room. Where the boy’s dean was while this was going on as it was on the main floor just down from the lobby, I don’t know. But when he finally heard the racket and found out what had happened he was not any to pleased. He called for volunteers to help Jay clear his room of the tons of paper. I remember there must have been a foot and a half of paper for fifty feet or more down the hallway even past our room, before they finally got Jay’s room completely emptied of paper.

The trash chute to the incinerator got so hot from the burning paper that I thought the place was going to catch on fire. I can’t say that it put a damper on the practical joker but payback is still sweet.