http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT-7EklLIG4

We Did It

I had never even shoplifted before. I was crouched down inside the construction barrel with my cell phone in one hand and the stun gun in the other. It was 3:45 A.M. I pressed the buttons on my phone every few seconds to keep the inside of the barrel dimly lit. Every minute or so I pulled the trigger on the stun gun to make sure it was working. I was convinced it wasn’t going to work when the time came. I knew I was killing the battery but I couldn’t help it. I was on the verge of panic.

I knew Dave was up in the hotel room watching the street from fifteen floors up. He could see every car coming in or going out. He was watching the street, but I figured he was also staring down at the barrel wondering how I was doing. I know I would have been. Chris was ten blocks away sitting in the car  – just waiting. It was 3:47 and still no text from Dave. The previous five Friday and Saturday nights the bouncer had made it there by 3:45 at the latest. Of course this would be the night he’d be running behind.

When Dave and Chris and I moved back to Boston from Los Angeles, after realizing we were never going to get famous, we all got regular jobs. Dave’s father got him a job through his Union connections. Chris and I went back to bartending. It wasn’t terrible. Our lives were fine but fantasies of fame and success had energized us for so long that without them time seemed to drag. Just about every night when my bar closed I would walk over to Chris’s bar, which stayed open an hour later, and Dave would already be sitting there. We’d drink and talk until Chris was done closing up. We’d walk home together over the bridge, usually, lamenting things that happened, or didn’t happen, while we were in L.A.

One night while Dave and I were sitting at Chris’s bar a guy we knew from our neighborhood walked in and sat down with us. He was drunk and pissed. He had just been fired from his bouncer job for saying something “of a sexual nature” to the coat check girl. He was carrying on about what a piece of shit the owner who fired him was and how bad he could fuck the guy over if he wanted to. We didn’t ask him to elaborate on how he could fuck the owner over - but he did.

The owner ran seven different bars in downtown Boston. It was well known to most of his employees that at the end of each night the owner would have one of his bouncers, who never carried a gun, a knife, or even a can of pepper spray, drive from bar to bar collecting that night’s cash deposits. The bouncer would then drive to an office on High Street, go inside, alone, and put the envelopes into the cash drop safe.  He said that after a busy Friday or Saturday night there could be as much as $50,000 in the drop. After a half hour of angry drunken rambling he stumbled out of the bar. That night during our walk home we talked about what it would be like to rob the bouncer. The conversation was fun. We were all talking fast and loud. It was a lot like the conversations we used to have about fame and fortune in L.A. Six weeks later I was crammed into a barrel waiting for the text from Dave.

It was 3:48 and I was about to lose my mind. I was sweating. My knees and back were burning with pain. Thinking about Dave sitting in a nice hotel room looking through binoculars sipping a soda wasn’t helping. It was my punishment for being the shortest and fitting inside the barrel.  I was five seconds from throwing the barrel off of me and running away when the one word text from Dave finally came: CAR. I looked through the peephole we had drilled into the side of the barrel and saw headlights brightening the street from around the corner. A second text: IT’S HIM. The two words knocked the wind out of me. The car turned onto High Street and he parked right where he always did. A third text: TURN YOUR PHONE OFF.

The bouncer sat in his car for about a minute before getting out, but it felt like a long time. It was pitch black inside the barrel. The stun gun was as wet with sweat as I was. Was that dangerous? Was I going to electrocute myself? The three of us had spent an hour on the internet researching stun guns to make sure we weren’t going to accidentally hurt or kill the bouncer. From everything we read they almost never caused any permanent harm. Chris even insisted that before we move ahead with the stun gun plan we check the bouncer out to make sure he wasn’t fat and out of shape. Chris thought that would make it more likely for him to have a heart attack. We didn’t find any evidence for his theory, but when the bouncer turned out to be young and fit Chris felt better.

The bouncer got out of the car and walked toward the door jingling his keys. Sidewalk construction had been happening on the street for weeks. Caution tape, the smaller orange safety cones, and the larger orange safety barrels were everywhere. The barrel sitting right next to the office door didn’t look out of place at all. He got to the door and was looking for the right key on his crowded key chain. He was a foot away from me. My heart was pounding. There was no way I was going to be able to go through with it. I had played it over a thousand times in my mind, but now everything was different. He was muttering swears to himself trying to find the right key. I think he was a little drunk. I lined the stun gun up with the rectangular slot we had cut in the side of the barrel. The prongs of the gun were 6 inches away from the side of his leg. All I had to do was reach out. It was just as we had planned it. I lowered the gun away from the hole. I couldn’t do it. I was too scared. I would just sit there and wait for him to leave. Chris wouldn’t care. He had been nervous about the whole thing from the start. He told me fifty times not to go through with it if anything seemed funny. Dave would make fun of me, but that would be it. We’d being drinking beers and laughing in the hotel room within a half hour.

The bouncer finally found the right key and opened the door. I was trying to decide if I should run away as soon as he went inside or wait for him to come back out and drive away. He was never in there for more than a few minutes. I would wait. Anyway, it didn’t matter. The second I decided I wasn’t going to do it I felt fine. Even my knees and back stopped aching. The bouncer held the door open with one hand and as he was trying to put his keys in his pocket he dropped them right next to the barrel. I saw them on the ground through the stun gun slot. My heart stopped. He bent down to pick up the keys and said, “What the fuck?” out loud. I closed my eyes and waited. Nothing happened. He was thinking. I don’t know if he saw me through the hole, or if without realizing it I had moved and he heard it. It may have been nothing. He may have just been putting the keys back into his pocket and thinking about some girl he saw that night. He may have been thinking about a future when he wouldn’t have to bounce anymore. He may have been thinking about what it would be like to be rich and famous. There was no way for me to know. I slid the stun gun through the hole and stunned the side of his leg. 

I ran around the corner of the building into the alley with the bag of cash envelopes pressed tight to my chest. I came to the green tarp in the shadows against the brick wall. I could barely see. I pulled up the tarp and got on the bicycle and started to ride as fast as I could. The alley that ran along the back of the buildings was about seven blocks long. There had been some disagreement about whether we should even bother with a bike or if it would be faster if I just ran. We timed my running and biking over that distance at a park near our apartment. It was ten seconds faster on the bike. I reached into my pocket and turned my phone back on as I rode through the ally. I got to the end and skidded to a stop. A car stopped right in front of the alley and my heart screamed – COP! But, my head knew it was Chris. I dropped the bike and got in the car. Chris had panic in his eyes. The first thing he asked was if I was OK. I told him I was. I looked at my phone. A text from Dave: ARE YOU OK? Neither of them asked about the money. I wasn’t thinking about the money.  We didn’t even get around to counting it until hours later. I just kept thinking the same three words over and over again – We did it. Chris drove toward the onramp to the highway. We did it. We did it. They were the only words my brain could produce. Later Dave and Chris told me they had been thinking the same thing.

A Memo

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To: Faculty and Staff, Cornell University

From: Williams G. Philpot, Dean of Students

Re: Benton Baxter Agricultural College

President Henry Jacobs, Provost Anthony Iula and Executive Vice President of Finance and Administration Jane Coward have distributed letters to the community describing the overall strategic plan for dealing with our current, highly sensitive, student body matter. I am writing to more fully explain the anticipated impact for the faculty and staff.

As most of you are aware our university has long held the complicated distinction of having the highest student suicide rate in the United States. We have all worked tirelessly over the past ten years to adjust school policy in the hope of curbing this unsettling fact. Now, however, new evidence has come to light and the ground is shifting beneath our feet.

Reports indicate that this past semester Benton Baxter Agricultural College (This is an actual school. Not a prank) overtook us, Cornell University, for first place with seven student suicides against our five. While we remain committed to improving our understanding of student needs, and mental health generally, we now have to revisit certain attitudes and policies.       

Student suicides, while tragic, are often viewed as evidence of the challenging, competitive, academic environment many parents wish for their children to experience. To put the matter bluntly - this is a business. Our suicide rate has always been, albeit quietly, something of a marketing tool. Parents want to know they’re not plunking down thirty thousand dollars a year to have their kids hanging out in the rec center shooting pool and having abortions. Vice President Coward in administrations will tell you, some of the Asian parents ask how many suicides we had the previous year before they say hello. 

Our goal is the very tricky, but essential, dance of keeping student suicides as low as possible without falling out of first place in the national standings. For ten years now this is exactly what had been happening. Everyone was happy. Now, out of the blue, Benton Baxter Agricultural College has seven kids drink turpentine because they couldn’t get their tractors started and now we’ve got Asian and American parents alike thinking “Hey, they must be doing something right down at Benton Baxter!”

I know you all dread seeing these memos in your inboxes because they invariably mean we’re going to ask you to do more work. Not this time. For once we’re asking that you to do a little less. We’d like to start teaching some “What Not to Notice” type signs.

What should I do if a student’s grades suddenly start to slip?  One approach that has proven successful over the years is to assume that the student is stupid.  Occam’s razor at its sharpest. I once had a student who thought Canada was an island. Anything’s possible nowadays. We don’t have to race every kid who gets C off to an analyst.

How seriously should I take it if a student threatens to commit suicide? Not very. Sometimes, honestly, most times - kids are joking. Humor is edgy and ironic today. “I have nothing to live for I wish I were dead” is like the “Where’s the Beef?” of the 1980’s. Remember that? Ten times every class kids would be shouting Where’s the Beef? back then. No more. Everything is dark now. Flow with the times. 

Is it bad to tell female students that they seem to be gaining weight? Not if you really think they are. Obesity is a problem. The notorious “freshman fifteen” is cute saying and all, but lets be honest, “freshman fifty” is more like it. Some of our girls leave here looking like Larry Holmes. We’re educators. There’s nothing wrong with educating your students in cold reality of the “guys don’t make passes at girls with fat asses” principle. In the end they’ll thank you. 

Is it OK to repeatedly make fun of the way a foreign student talks in front of the class? Only if you actually have something funny to say about it. Or if you’re particularly good at funny accents. Nothing gratuitous. No yelling – Hey go back to Surinam, Bombito! No one knows what the fuck you’re talking about! Actually, I just laughed out loud at the thought of that. Maybe it is OK. I don’t know. Your call.  

What should I do if I suspect a female student may have been the victim of sexual assault? Blame her. I barely even have to walk you through the drill with this one: You were wearing jeans and sweater? On a Tuesday? Yeah, I guess you can call the police if you want…

If a student dies mysteriously or goes missing, is it OK to write a fake suicide note in order that the University will get credit for the suicide? Obviously, not really. The last thing we need is to start writing suicide notes for ‘missing’ kids who are actually just up in Montreal getting lap dances for the weekend. These kids have families. And one thing we know about families – they sue. I’m 99.99% percent inflexible on this – NO WRITING FAKE SUICIDE NOTES! Unless you do it and happen to get away with it in which case, you have my word, we won’t be bringing in Scotland Yard to try and figure out what actually happed. But if you get caught you’re fired. No question. 

These are the just a few of ideas we’ve been kicking around on the administrative end. As always your thoughts and opinions are welcomed and highly valued. Lets keep the pop quizzes coming, keep telling kids their futures hinge on every breath they take, and keep making Cornell one of the world’s finest institutions of higher learning!  

 Williams G. Philpot, 

 Dean of Students