We all have those “things”, those moments, instances, memories of doing something to someone we know and love that was just flat out mean but so funny it was worth it. This is a story about one of those times.
Beck Hall, Kutztown University, 1995. My roommate was Katherine Grill and grunge ruled the airwaves while The X-Files ruled primetime television. We lived for Thursday as all college students do and needless to say we usually found ourselves surfing the buzz somewhere between only slightly and flat out totally drunk. This particular Thursday was no different except for the one, small, mistaken drunken admission by Kathy to Anna and myself.
We had walked home from The Cliffs, a group of dilapidated, low-rent, shabby furnished apartments managed by a slumlord on the far edge of campus. Few women lived there as The Cliffs tended to be the providence of boys who typically raised rent money but throwing keggers for all the underage folks and charging anywhere between $3 and $5 for a red plastic party cup of beer.
It was always embarrassing to go to The Cliffs and walk in to a house full of men, as a woman was instantly sized up by dozens of probing eyes. What was far more embarrassing however, was having to do “The Walk of Shame”. The Walk of Shame was what the college kids called the long, one mile, drunken walk back to campus from The Cliffs that was punctuated by fits of yelling, staggering, vomiting, passing out in snowbanks or any combination thereof.
This particular Thursday night the three of us girls made “The Walk” back from the Cliffs around 1am. This was a strategic plan as Camillo’s pizza didn’t close until 2am and they were located about 8 blocks from the dorm. As the three of us sat eating our pizza and mozzarella cheese fries, Kathy started talking about the X-Files, which was her favorite television show at the moment. Anna and I knew little of the X-Files as neither of us were big TV watchers and more importantly we didn’t really care for sci-fi. But we were drunk and so we sat there listening to her prattle on about aliens and body snatches and UFO captures and human monitoring experiments.
“Ya know P”, Kathy loudly whispered to me, “every morning when I first wake up I reach behind my ears to check to see if I’ve been tagged by aliens.”
“Bahahahaha” was the sound that erupted from me followed by a “What? Are you for real?”
“I’m being totally serious. Aliens leave little bar tags behind your ears. You can tell because you’ll feel a scar and that is where they cut you and buried the tag.”
“If someone cut you at night it wouldn’t heal in time for there to be a scar the next morning?”
“Yeah it would, if it was put there by aliens.”
“Ok you’re both being stupid”, Anna erupts. “Let’s just go. I feel sick.”
We get up, pay the clerk, and head back to the dorm. As we walk Kathy begins to stagger more and more and Anna and I end up have carrying her back to her room. I was rooming with Kathy then and fortunately had the key. We got her changed and into bed and then headed for the TV lounge.
As Anna and I sat there waiting for the buzz to wear off I had a flash of genius. “Anna?”
“Yeah?”
“You know how we are always playing jokes on one another?”
“Yeah?”
“Kathy’s overdue. I say we tag her!”
“What?”
“You know. Like the aliens. I say we put a tag behind her ear so she’ll find it in the morning when she is still pissed drunk and freak out.”
“Oh my god P, that is soooooo mean. Funny, but mean. I’m in!”
I could always count on Anna to do something diabolical with me. We hatched our plan. It involved a paperclip, a slip of paper with numbers typed on it using my old word processor, and egg of silly putty, and some Crazy Glue.
At this point I have to say, do you know how hard it is to not laugh when drunk and trying to mess with your best friend? Nye impossible.
Anna and I commando back to my room like Navy Seals on a convert mission. I turn the doorknob to the room so slowly that it barely clicks and swing the door open. Anna scurries in while I slowly turn the handle back to its normal position before letting go of the knob. We prop the door open with the one-pound trilobite fossil I found while on a geology dig so that we can make a clean and quite getaway. My job is to figure out how to get Kathy to turn over on her stomach so as to expose the back of one of her ears. Anna’s job is to prepare the tag. She secures the two inch long piece of paper with serial number XG74829 typed on it to the unfolded paperclip with some clear tape. She then pushes the paperclip into the silly putty so that the entire clip and paper is covered by putty. Then she carefully applies a thin line of Crazy Glue to the back of the putty, just enough for the putty to stick to the skin behind Kathy’s ear but not enough to actually stick permanently and be painful to pull off.
While Anna is doing this I continue to battle with Kathy. I finally tickle her armpit which causes her to swing her right arm across her body in a defensive move and ultimately makes her roll on to her side. I gently pull Kathy’s long, black hair back exposing her ear. Anna erupts in hushed laughter as I’m holding the hair and choking on my own chortles of laughter. “Quick Anna”, I loudly whisper.
Anna leans in, posed to stick the putty and at the last second says, “I can’t do it. I’m laughing to hard. I’m gonna hit her in the head.”
We both stand there shaking from excited laughter, which is made more funny by the fact that every time I laugh Kathy’s hair, which is still clutched in my hand, bounces up and down and I’m convinced the tugging of her hair is gonna foil the whole plan.
“Anna. Shhh. Ok. Calm down. We can do this. Deep breaths. Now stick it!” Anna moves in slow motion and gently pushes the putty against the skin behind her ear. Kathy twitches and starts to turn and I let go of her hair. We run out of the room and I kick the trilobite doorstop and begin to shut the door.
“P is that you?” Kathy mutters.
“Yeah I’m just getting in. Sorry to wake you,” I say through laughter. As I walk in the door I signal for Anna to wait at the bathroom for me.
“Oh ok”, Kathy mumbles and goes back to bed. I grab my shower caddy and towel and head for the bathroom to meet Anna and clean up for bed.
As Anna and I laugh she says, “I think it stuck. I’m not sure.”
“Well we’ll know in the morning. I’ll call you soon as she wakes up.”
“She is gonna kill you. Call me ASAP!” she says as she skips out of the bathroom.
I clean up and head for bed. I manage to quietly crawl up to my loft bed and snuggle in for sleep, which doesn’t come. I lay awake in silent anticipation of morning and Kathy waking up. About 9am the next morning I hear Kathy turning in the bed below. I open my eyes and peer out under the safety roll bar that prevents me from falling out of the loft. A bar that also provides for the safety of prying eyes as Kathy can’t tell I’m watching her. She stands up, stretches right then left and then stands in front of the vanity mirror. I watch as she looks over both her shoulders to see if I’m awake and I make the deep breathing sounds of deep sleep for good effect. She buys it and in one swift movement she reaches up behind her ears to check for alien tags.
“Aaaggghhh, oh my god!” she silently screams as she leans in close to the mirror and tries to pull her hair back from her head. She’s contorted in front of the mirror when she spies the silly putty. I’m dying and trying not to laugh out loud by shoving an entire pillow in my mouth. I continue to watch as she tries to pull of the putty and can’t. Oh damn it Anna, too much Super Glue. She tries again and finally frees it with a loud “Ouch! What the fuck is that!” emanating from Kathy.
“Kathy? You ok?” I mutter sleepily.
“P?” she says in terror.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve been tagged!” She holds the silly putty out to me in her shaky hand as I lean up over the roll bar to get a better view.
“What is it?” I snigger.
“Agh, Agh, Agh! Oh my god! Oh my god! Agh!”, Kathy screams.
“What?”
“Holy fuck. Shit, fuck, holy fuck. Oh my god, oh my god. It’s a serial number.”
She starts to shake and falls on to her bed in hyperventilating sobs.
Now at this point I am torn between the two opposing emotions of victory and guilt. Victory in pulling off the greatest alien prank ever and guilt for pulling of the greatest alien prank ever and making Kathy truly believe that she was tagged and grabbed by X-File origin aliens.
The only thing left to decide was what to do. Do I pretend to deactivate the alien tag and thereby liberate Kathy from a lifetime of alien experiments and put her back to bed in the hopes that she forget about the whole incident OR do I fess up and tell her what Anna and I did?
Later that day when Kathy woke up she told me about this crazy dream she had about alien tags and how I rescued her by destroying the ear sensor. I laughed and said, “Sounds like you need to eat. Let’s go to the cafeteria.”
Anna and I made a pact of silence and never told anyone what we had done, but every now and then we’d leave numbered tags and silly putty around Kathy’s room just to see what she’d do. Mean…yes. Funny…definitely.
