Best $20 ever spent

[UncleDynamite]

Okay, so it's Friday night. The girls decide to do a Girl's Night Out, eating dinner and shopping together. So the guys have the evening to ourselves, and we start by hanging out in the lounge with take-out Chinese, a game of pool, and the Presidential debate going on in the background. Things are going well until Andrews runs down the stairs and shows us what he got in the mail today: a water balloon launcher he got on eBay for $20. Now, we think this is pretty cool, and we figure, hey, let's check the range on this thing. We fill up some balloons, and sneak up on to the roof of the dorm. It's three stories high, so we can see a fair amount all around us, just no people.

First target: Beckett Hall. Pretty far, there's a large lawn, a volleyball court, and barbeque pit in between it and our position. We take a shot, hit the roof. Damn good range, in other words.

Second target: Swimming pool. From our position, there's a street, tennis courts, and basketball courts. First try, we get a balloon in the pool. Sizeable splash, lots of ripples. Really cool, but some water polo player nearby saw. We decide to get off the roof before anyone notices.

Go into the bathroom, fill up a whole bucket with balloons. Around 9:30 at this point. We have three guys as launchers, two guys carrying the ammunition, and three guys with cell phones to act as spotters.

Third target: Robby's room. We leave the dorm, walk across the lawn, and see that Robby's in his room watching a movie. His blinds are open and the lights are on, so we can clearly see him leaning back in his chair in front of the TV. We take two shots, one going over the building and another hitting someone else's window by accident. Third shot smacks his window. Robby falls backwards in the chair he was leaning back in. The guy is completely dazed, has no clue what's going on, looks out the window but can't see us because we're behind the bushes.

Fourth target: Bradley Lounge. Door's open, a bunch of people are playing a drinking game in there. Red cups everywhere on the table. We make two shots. First hits a tree. Second hits the window of the lounge, startling a few of those inside, but they don't notice because they're too drunk. Third shot goes straight through the door and hits the table. Cups go flying, beer splashes everywhere, people are screaming, and we make a run for it quick.

Fifth target: Party at Pitzer College. We walk over there for a little bit, decide to lob a few into the patio where things were happening. I go into the party with a cell phone, schmoozing here and there. Basically, I was talking to the guys down in the parking lot below without giving away what I was doing, so I was saying things like, "Holy crap, guys, they're shooting water balloons into the party over here. Yeah, yeah. All they have to do is shoot a little more to their left to hit the bar." Unfortunately, after ten or so shots, only two hit close enough to splash a little on a couple of people. The problem was that the patio was mostly covered, so the balloons were splattering on that and not entering the patio itself. Abort.

Sixth target: Dorm at Pitzer College. We see a couple of guys hanging out on the balcony of their dorm, so we decide to hit them. We have a clean shot from the sidewalk, the only problem being that the sidewalk had lots of traffic. So three guys are hunched over, behind some low bushes near the walk with the launcher. Yet everyone can see them, so we have all these people watching the guys as they get ready to fire. We let off a quick shot, hit a wall behind the two on the balcony, and sprint off of the campus. Pretty stupid, but pretty funny.

Reload.

Seventh target: Party at Pomona College. Fortunately, we got our biggest success of the night at Pomona, which is good because they're our rivals. The party is in the middle of a big courtyard, surrounded by buildings, so we can get really close and not be seen at all. We have all the spotters out there, reporting in. We fire a good five shots or so, and we hit people each time, one time hitting the middle of the dance floor. We're doing this pretty quick, before Campus Security catches on. Finally, around our sixth shot, the balloon goes up, goes down, and then the music stops.

We call one of the spotters, and he says, "Guys, I think you hit... oh fuck."

At that very moment, Security pulls up in the parking lot. We see a guy get out of the car, and we start running like mad men. We start sprinting around, splitting up, and somehow got back to school. We mill around a few parties till the coast is clear, and meet back up at the dorm.

It turns out that on the last shot, we hit the goddamn DJ. Yeah, got security really riled up when that happened. Amazingly, only one of us got caught on the escape, and the one who was stopped got off because he knew the security guard who stopped him. Crazy night, I tell you. Lots of stories for brunch tomorrow morning. We're kicking back with a few drinks right now, figure that we could use a reward for a chaos-filled night. Best $20 ever spent, I must say.