did y’all know i got arrested in college?

well not really. i was sort of arrested.

i know what y’all are thinkin. how do you get sort of arrested?

😉

well. i was a pledge for phi gamma delta. for just one semester of course, and we had to perform a few, um, things……

seems that one of my pledge educators was running for homecoming king. and he wanted a little advertising.

so late one saturday. around midnight or so, 3 of my pledge brothers, and myself, took it upon ourselves (i blame dave quinn totally) to secure some advertising.

we donned dark clothing and headed for the football stadium.

there had been a game that night, which meant that the center of the ‘home’ side of field was a mess. and more importantly, the seats were messed up.

the center of the home team side had actual seats. not just the aluminum bench for everyone to sit on (especially the visitors), the center had these personal seats. the back was silver, and the seat was blue. and they folded.

what that meant to us is that we could go in, and by careful manipulation, we could ‘spell’ things out with the seats.

everybody driving by the main road next to the stadium would get a pretty message to read.

our mission that night was ‘fiji dave quinn my hero’

he was running for homecoming king with the slogan of ‘king david’.

myself, mark youden, john hayes (i think) and ron parsons snuck through the parking lot (insert visual of john belushi in animal house here please), climbed the 7′ fence, and got to work.

the first thing you have to do is normalize the seats. we had to go through every single row, and put all the seats up first, to provide the nice clean background. during this first phase, a police helicopter flew overhead, en route to apprehending some actual nefarious villains. it saw us and made a second pass and shined it’s light on us.

we crapped ourselves. and ran into a bathroom to get out of the spotlight of death.

he flew on, but no doubt contacted the university police.

we resumed our work and sent ron parsons to the other side of the field to direct our diction.

the university police arrived. and sat in the parking lot. now, they knew there was a game that night. and yet somehow, the seats miraculously spelled ‘fij dav qui’. pshaw. we weren’t quite done. but they were out there watching, so we were laying down in the seats. way up by the top.

so the police drove their car onto the field. the bastards. and actually walked up into the stadium. some poor cop yelled that he knew we were there. and explained what i just explained above about the seats being rearranged. so just come on out, because if we made him check every single row. he was going to be pissed.

we didn’t budge. and ron was on the complete other side of the stadium.

he began walking up the steps. stopping at each row, and checking amid the trash for a body.

now, about half way up, he has to start considering that we may have actually run when he first showed up. we could actually be gone, and there is his dimb ass walking around in the stadium for nothing. and true to form, about two thirds of the way up, he got tired and left. completely. well, maybe he just went around the block.

he came back. we were finished and were standing in the middle of the field admiring our handy work. mark and john headed the ‘wrong’ way and ron (pre-law and unathletic) and myself headed towards greek row.

the cop drove over to intercept ron and myself. like he knew where we were headed or something…… so i turned around and ran all the way back acroos the field.

damnit.

second cop car.

mark and john had seen the car moving towards them and fell down around the base of to teeeny tiny little trees. lighted even. the cop never saw them.

he saw me.

he threw the car in reverse and started onto the field. allowing mark and john to get away. scot free.

i had to again run across the field. three times now. but that didn’t matter. no cop was going to catch me (go ahead and sing the ‘bad boy bad boy, what cha gonna do?’ song here)

i got to the other side of the field, and was headed for the 7′ fence, and the first cop was waiting.

wouldn’t ya know it. uta’s only black cop. and young too. uh-uh. 7′ fences can’t stop me. i was over so fast, sprinting thought the parking lot, then through the beta theta pi house, (no really, don’t get up) around the delta zeta house and home free!

so i waited.

nobody else showed up.

i waited 45 minutes.

still no one.

seems mark and john, were presented with suburbia back yards for their escape. and a plethora of dogs. they eventually made it home.

but i didn’t see them again that night.

i made it over the fence.

ron didn’t.

ron was 17 and from south dakota. he had been arrested by the university police. and they were putting the fear of God into him. seems that the could not release him because he was a minor. they were going to have to call his parents, and have them fly from s dakota to texas to get theor boy out of the cube.

oh yeah, he was shitting.

unless of course he fessed up and told the police who else was with him.

cut bacj to me sitting in the fiji house wondering where everyone else was.

then cut to me in my ’69 camaro driving around the football stadium, with no headlights, hanging out the window, yelling ‘ron!, mark!, john!’. they pulled me over.

and cubed me.

no for the good part.

they called the police. city of arlington police, to have me thrown in the dungeon (artisitc license). the regular police showed up, asked to see my student id card, and driver’s license, the promptly told the campus police i had broken no laws.

take that bitches!

seems that part of my ‘fees’ to attend uta included a ‘building use fee’, which gave me legal landlord rights. i had legal justification for being there.

i had however broken a university rule.

so i got to see the conduct dean. he was screaming at some poor dude when i got there. i had arrived early (11:15 For my 11:30 ass chewing) and had to sit there and listen to him scream at some poor dude for half an hour.

at 11:45 he was ready for me.

i got the 30 second speech. seems he was familiar with writing in the seats and was confident we weren’t vandalizing anything. told me that some people were fond of taking a knife to the astroturf. those anarchic bastards! how dare soemone take a knife to the sacred institution of college football holiness!

he concluded with the line, ‘this is your one freebie, come in here again, and i’m going to treat you like that other guy (he said his name), then kick your ass out! now i’m going to lunch, get the fuck out of my office and i never want to see you again.’

i have no idea what that guys name is. and i don’t want to know.

dave quinn actually won homecoming king. bastard.

UPDATE:

ron ended up getting out of campus jail without having his parents fly down from s dakota. he narced on me, as was understandable considering what the sops were feeding him. that’s how the police jumped from pulling me over, to knowing i was a guilty party.

mark and john never did get caught. that occasion at least. mark got caught a little while later in the campus pool at night.

that was fun too. but i had to stop all my shenanigans after the above incident.