Reasons I Got In Trouble In College: Part 3

Disturbing the Disturbance Of Peace

The student housing building I lived in was at a very unique position on campus, in that it was nestled in between several Natural Ice repositories, known to the layman as fraternities. Every spring for about a week, these shorts-clad gentlemen could be found participating in their group mating ritual. This consisted of hanging out on their house front lawns, drinking beer in kiddie pools or playing basketball, all while the frat house band played live music that would make two square blocks reek of ill-played alternative music.

I'm not joking when I say that two square blocks were constantly filled with their awful frat music; regardless of the time of day. I assumed that music acted as a social lubricant, making it easier for them to walk around in a circle with their thumbs up the ass of the guy in front of them; but I digress. Aside from being utterly inconsiderate of the surrounding area, what infuriated me the most was that they thought they were awesome for engaging in said activities. We'd had all that we could stands and we couldn't stands no more.

Sweet frat party, bro

Obviously, the most effective way to fight a disturbance of the peace was with a more focused, and offensive disturbance of the peace. Following this rule, we rounded up a guitar amp, several large parking cones, several yellers and one accomplished guitar player, and set about our mission. Our attack was a two-prong one; the yellers would use the large cones to yell phrases such as "ffffrrrrraaaaaattttttttt bbbbooooooyyyyysssss", and "shut up you fags", while the amp focused the sounds of guitar solo versions of shitty Dave Mathews and Chumbawamba songs towards the offending lawn party.

In our heads, we'd hoped this would make the fratties think "what the hell is that annoying shit?! Wait a minute, we're also making annoying noise. Maybe we should stop." Of course, this is never ever the case, as common sense no longer exists. The effect achieved was actually quite the opposite of what we were hoping. What we got was six or so frat boys with backwards hats and board shorts, in a Busch Light fueled rage storming us.

Hundreds of swear words, many, many throw objects and constant statements affirming that I possessed a hatchet later, the engagement had to be arbitrated by several officials from both housing establishments. At the end of it all, somehow WE came out looking like the assholes. Who knew you weren't supposed to have a hatchet on your person while living in student housing?

Unwelcomed Arson

Backstory: A group of my friends that had lived in the same hall as I, had recently joined together and moved into a house directly behind the hall, which I still lived in. As was to be expected, they had a "proper" house warming party during the summer, specifically to prevent the campus patrol Nazis from interfering in the good times.

Like all good college parties, there was loud music, beer pong, copious alcohol consumption and pent up male aggression. But as the party began to wind down, we knew it would take something extra awesome, and borderline illegal, to jolt it back to life. So we decided to test an old urban legend; could we make our own napalm. It turns out we could.

After gathering a surprisingly small amount of supplies, and investing but an hour into the process, we had a tub containing a sticky and less-than-legal substance. But what to do with our new-found adult Play-Doh? It was then that I remembered an important lesson that I learned from the lame-ass snake fireworks kids get on the 4th of July: hot, burning chemicals on pavement leaves the cement charred. But what, oh what, would five adult men with napalm want to permanently burn into public works? Why, a penis of course!

At roughly 1AM, we loaded up into my car and drove over to the suburbs on the other side of town, where we felt safe in knowing it'd never be traced back to us. There, out in the middle of a residential side street, the napalm artisans began using the goo to outline a magnificent giant cock in the middle of the street. I, being the wheelman, stayed in the car, prepared to make out getaway at a moments notice.

Several minutes went by, and the time had come to unleash the hell fires upon the unsuspecting neighborhood. I will say this: in my head, I thought the ensuing flames would be small, sort of like you see in the movies when someone lights a trail of gasoline on fire. Fuck no, that wasn't the case. Upon ignition, a wall of flames literally three feet high (in the shape of a big cock) engulfed the street. I promptly leaned out the window of the car and exclaimed "it's time to be going now!". We made a clean getaway, and went back the next day to check out the end result. Sure enough: giant black dick in the middle of the road. Great success.

For years afterwards, we'd go back to make sure the dick was still there. And it always was. I assumed the neighborhood attempted to clean it, but with no luck. Their kids would still ride their bicycles innocently on a big road-dick. I knew it chapped their ass, and rightfully so. Eventually, the city had to tear up that piece of road and replace it entirely. Great success again.

Here, you can see the replaced chunk of road, where Old Cocky used to reside

Nuclear Terrorism

Back in college I was, and still am, quite the explorer; me and my friends would go places just to say we'd been there. Distance, awkwardness or legality were not factors we took into consideration when choosing our roaming adventures. The usual landmarks and national parks were, often enough, able to satisfy our Indiana Jones-eque need to quest about. In this particular story, we decided to go for something more vintage...something which would get firearms pointed at us.

Our school being in the midwest afforded us a certain adventure opportunity. During the cold war, the concept of the ballistic missile complex placement in the US was generally to put them as far inland as possible, to make them the maximum distance for enemy missiles to engage. This gave us the rare treat of having plenty of decommissioned Atlas ballistic missile sites to play with.

Now, before you get all high and mighty and say "it's decommissioned, what kind of trouble could you get in?", all of these former military installations are owned by very protective and naturally eccentric land owners. They're extremely protective of them especially given the predilection for meth users to find them and turn them into meth labs. Not dissuaded by this fact me and four friends loaded up and set out for our 1950s nuclear adventure.

The closest site was a mere 10 minutes outside of town, with paved roads all the way up to it, so the adventure wasn't fraught with many Oregon Trail happenings. Rather uneventfully we pulled up to the gate and all unloaded, setting our sites on the tall military fence that remained and stood between us and the concrete glory. We also took notice of a maroon mini van cruising by us at drive-by speeds. What we were doing might not have looked so damning, if it weren't for the fact that the driver of the car was now running towards the emplacement...with a bandanna on his head...carrying a ceramic raccoon...waving a wiffle ball bat over his head. Don't ask; he was just awesome like that.

As we all got up to the fence, three of the five decided it would be best if they didn't scale the fence and enter the complex; some little hang up about breaking and entering I suppose. Thankfully, they did assist me and the wiffle ball bat toting driver over the fence. Here's the only known photo that remains from the entire event:

100% not gay

All was well once inside the complex. The early missile complexes were above ground installations, which gave us many concrete and steel structures to explore. Sadly, much of the ballistic missile shelter itself was flooded from decades of rain. We still poked around a bit though...I mean...how often do you get to play in a nuclear missile readiness site? All was going well when we noticed that quite a few police vehicles had coalesced at the front gate...

Happily for us, these weren't normal cops, but portly sheriffs; they had no way of reaching us on the other side of the fence. We saw them detaining the people that hadn't entered the complex, and motioning for us to come over to them. Following their instructions, we went back to the section of fence we scaled to get in. Beyond the obvious law enforcement issue at hand, another hindsight of ours became clear to us at this point. As seen in the photo, we needed help to enter in the first place; our exit would not be as seamless.

They insisted we exit the complex immediately so that they could have a little "chat" with us. Being the smart-ass that I am, and knowing the sheriffs had no other recourse, I responded with "mind helping me out of here? It was hard as hell to get in in the first place.". Apparently they did not think this was a fair proposal, and left me to my own awkward exit devices.

Several minutes of struggling later, we were both back on the outside again. We were immediately presented with forms to fill out so that the officers could extract all of our pertinent info. They then informed us that all trespassing and unlawful entry charges aside, the reason they were called was that they had received a report of bandanna-clad terrorists running into the installation, and it was assumed that we were probably crazy meth heads.

After talking to us, they weren't quite sure that we WEREN'T meth heads, because no matter what we said, they couldn't understand what we were doing in an old missile emplacement with a ceramic raccoon. They even searched the inside of the raccoon to make sure we hadn't stashed drugs in it, but were eventually forced to conclude that we were a bunch of retarded college students.

They took individual as well as group photos of us (including us holding the raccoon), and then warned us to not come back, or they'd be forced to arrest us. We thought for sure that arrest was in our very near future, but I guess what we did was humorous enough to look past the illegality of it. To this day we're still fairly certain that in some po-dunk Kansas sheriff's office there's a photo of five idiots with a ceramic raccoon; and that the officers will be telling that tale for quite some time.