Frat Life 101, Night Of The Dunking Pledges, Part 3

The next plan came together quite simply. Somebody had some balloons. A few other people had some shoe polish. The rest of our supplies were inadvertently "donated" by the university as we went through our dorms and gathered every single roll of toilet paper that we could find. The only toilet paper left in the entire dorm was the rolls on the floors where our rooms were. All else were taken and thus properly armed we made our way to the fraternity house for what would be our final showdown. We quietly left our vehicles and stationed a few pledges at the front door armed with the balloons that were now filled with water. The rest of us started applying shoe polish to car windshields and toilet paper to the cars and the trees on the property. The wind was blowing slightly and it was a magnificent sight to behold.

We were unsure of how many, if any, members were inside the house and eventually I guess we made enough noise for one of them to open the front door. As he did so several water balloons flew at him and he quickly slammed the door shut and locked it. We gave up on the rest of our work and decided that now we had to get into the house and get someone else to take a trip to the river. The siege on the house had begun and would not be halted for any man or reason. As we were looking for a way in we found that those inside had quickly procured their own water balloons and a brief firefight broke out. At some point I came up with the idea that the lock on the small bathroom window was broken and that if we were quiet enough we could sneak inside.


Thankfully I had remembered correctly and the lock was indeed broken. Somehow about five or six of us managed to climb through the window without making too much noise. We waited a few moments and then burst through the door. This is where with age my memory has started to get cloudy. I don't recall if Chris was inside and had made it into his room but I know for a fact that Gary and Spazz were. Someone was tasked to unlock the front door and the rest went after whoever they could find. Remarkably Gary made it past everyone and locked himself in his room that was right next to the bathroom but Spazz wasn't that lucky. I found him face down on his bed with Terry on top pinning his arms behind him. He couldn't move and was captured and knew that since no mercy would be given he wouldn't even bother asking for it. The handcuffs were thrown on him quickly and we took him outside and started loading him in a vehicle.

If you can believe it that's when things got really crazy. Gary climbed out of his window onto the porch wearing camouflage pants, no shirt and a Spiderman mask while carrying a boat oar. He screamed something like "I'm coming for you Spazz!" and ran at us swinging the oar. Swiftly he was disarmed and taken to the ground but he was fighting fiercely. A decision was made to send the vehicle ahead with Spazz and then we addressed our predicament. We chose to try and get away from Gary to another vehicle but he was holding onto someone so we ran back to help. Then as everyone let go he got ahold of my arm and I swear he was trying to bite me so everyone else came back and this time we held him up in the air by his limbs and at the count of three dropped him and ran to the waiting truck and dove in as it raced off. Once again another pair of handcuffs would have come in handy although I don't think that anyone involved would have relished the thought of what would happen once those handcuffs came off.

A quick stop was in order so that we could fulfill our part of the bargain and we found that we barely could scrape together any money so we were forced to purchase a single, generic cigarette and a single, warm, generic beer. Seriously, that's all we could afford. This was in the days before there were ATMs on every street corner and in every convenience store. Thus armed with our provisions we continued on to the river where Spazz chose to go in practically undressed but he was very cross with us when he found out what we had for him afterwards. Since he was an avid smoker and drinker he was offended by our offerings and perhaps thought that we didn't like him. Nothing could be further from the truth for we liked him very much but unfortunately, we were just broke college kids trying to get by on an amazing night.

We returned Spazz to the house and after this night of infamy I think we gained a great deal of respect in the eyes of the members and the alumni. They now knew that we had the right spirit and the cojones to go all out in the pursuit of fun and brotherhood. This knowledge however didn't cease to make us hesitant the next few days as we were on the lookout for some good natured retaliation. It didn't turn out to be necessary at that time but in an odd way I myself would suffer a form of payback a few years later when a very different pledge class did the same to me at the very same site where we had dunked those three members. The kick of it is that I wasn't even in school at the time. More on that story soon.

Published by Don Leach