Back in Freshman year of college, I was involved in a prank gone wrong. Here's what happened.
I snuck into my friend, Ben Eng's, dorm room and hid behind his laundry basket while he was gone brushing his teeth before bed. The goal was to scare Ben upon his return.
It's relevant that Ben's roommate was the coolest kid in the world: Connor Leahy. Connor had a suave, handsome, good-at-sports calmness about him. Like the first kid to get a girlfriend in elementary school. Or a con artist.
So anyway, there I was, waiting behind Ben's dirty clothes for what seems like an eternity. Then, finally I heard a "creeeeak" as a long, athletic leg stepped through the doorway. In an instant, I knew this leg belonged to someone capable of unironically wearing a baseball hat on backwards and nailing it. It was not Ben. It was Connor. Uh oh.
Now I had to choose between two difficult options:
Option 1: hope Connor leaves soon, then abandon the mission, and sneak out unscathed. The Risk: Connor finds me and from his point of view I've just been hiding in his room spying on him like a weirdo. Not good! Instead, I proceed with...
Option 2: stand up and explain the situation. The look on Connor's face when he noticed me (someone who does not live in his room) appear out of nowhere and let out a meager "hey" was indescribably embarrassing.
This haunted me for years. It was one of those humiliating moments my brain would conjure up as I lie in bed right before happily falling asleep. Luckily, I ran into Connor right before graduation which gave me a chance to bring up the incident so that we could laugh it off together, freeing myself out from under the shadow that bad memory has cast on me.
Nope! "Oh I don't even remember that," Connor told me. Oof. My lowest moment hadn't even registered as a blip on the map of Connor's memories. And—even worse—I just reminded him of the event. By bringing it up, I had essentially just done the whole thing again! I'll never sleep again.
Anyway, the point of all that is Ben Eng used to do this half-juggling, half-yo-yo performance art called "poi" and tonight someone in my hostel also was doing it. (But I didn't capture it on camera, so instead you can watch below as I break some rules at a local bar.)