Ever since I can remember, I have been involved with or witnessed a dumb form of entertainment that, at the time, seemed like some sort of game. Retrospectively, of course, the events were either silly, dangerous, or just a bad idea any way you look at them. So here are a few that I can remember.

When I was about seven years old, I lived in a house on a cul de sac, with a few older kids in the nearby houses. I think their names were Sammy and Jason, but I can't be sure. There was also a strange girl that lived across the street, and she had a large Great Dane. The game was pet the dog when he was not in the mood. I remember him picking me up and throwing me down on the ground, though the really clear memories are of my hand about to touch his head and then, almost instantaneously, looking up at his head from the ground. While the dog was only playing, and I was completely uninjured, I was, without a doubt, shaken. I didn't play that game too many times after that.

On that same cul de sac, though, with those two dorky little kids, I once engaged in a game of stick ball, using a tennis ball and a real baseball bat. The tennis ball was not really cutting it on the pitch, though when the batter got a piece of it, it really took off, making for some interesting, long pauses between grand slams. At some point, I was catching that foul little ball, and I stupidly stepped in to grab the ball after it had bounced. The batter at the time (either Sammy, or maybe Jason, but it doesn't matter) decided to take a swing at the ball anyway. I remember distinctly the feeling of my entire head literally ringing as I fell to the ground. I woke up on the couch in our house, ice on the head, kids at the door checking with my mother to see that I was okay. There wasn't too much stick ball after that (with good reason... I was living near lunatics, and I was clearly not adept at these extreme sports).

One time, in high school, some friends and I were bored, so we went by this other guy's house (his parents' house, actually) and stole his mailbox. Pulled it right out of the ground, post and all. That was a hoot, but what to do with it after that? Why, put it in a driveway across the street from a third friend, who knew the owner of the mailbox. The next day, that third guy saw it, but didn't quite link together the series of events. Good thing, because the next night, since it was still sitting outside (though not as near the sidewalk as where we left it), we decided to put it back at the owner's house (I think his name was Paul, and the third guy was John-- really). A couple of days later, after Paul had told my friend Peter (he and Jerry and I were the culprits, you see) about the weird series of events surrounding the family mailbox, we decided that the box would have to disappear again. This time, however Paul's parents had mounted the post for the box in concrete. It proved tricky, but Jerry and I managed to yank that puppy right out of the ground, concrete and all. We put it back at that same driveway from the first encounter, and the owner of that house must have figured "Hey, Free mailbox!" because he knocked all of that concrete off and cleaned it up real nice. In the mean time, Paul had pointed out to Peter that the mysterious mailbox thieves had been at it again, so we clearly had to put the mailbox back, sans concrete, of course. And so ended our fascination with this mailbox, as did the possibility of getting caught for these felonies (though Peter eventually stole the mailbox and left it impaled on a fencepost on our high school campus...)

In college, there were many silly games. The first one was Freshman Run. I can't say anything else about this, since there might be some soon-to-be-Freshmen out there, about to attend Harvey Mudd College, and I am honor-bound not to divulge such information. But, it is almost as silly as Lemon Run, which is also secret.

I can, however, tell you about one game I did not participate in, because I am just not that dumb. "Jack Fest" it was called, and probably still is. It seems that one would sign up in a weight class so that the party organizers could purchase enough Jack Daniels Bourbon Whiskey, and at the appointed hour, the participants would gather and begin to drink said whiskey at a leisurely pace. This would continue until the Jack was gone, or the players were passed out. The shots were counted, of course, and the record when I left was 34, I think. There might have been some constraint about counting up until midnight, but I recall that that particular evening, the "Winner" vomited at least once, then continued downing shots of Jack for some time afterward. Ouch.

Our college, being as small as it was, liked to have all of its students living on campus. To accomplish this, there were six dorms built to house us all (a seventh was added after I graduated) and there was, for the most part, enough room. BUT, in order to determine how rooms and roommates were assigned, we had to resort to an age-old tradition known as "Room Draw." This involved the president of each class creating and distributing at random a set of numbers to determine draw order (my freshman year, our President, Zippy, used non-sequential numbers off of the many bottles he found around him, leading to selections such as 151, 57, 80, No. 7, etc... this proved to be funny for exactly 1 second), while the Dormitory Affairs representatives for that class (seniors first) oversaw the actual "Pulls" into the various available accomodations. To make matters even more exciting, there was a "Mock Draw" where once could see how close to the desired room one could get, then return for strategy sessions before the next, real night. It was silly, yet critically important at that time.

Remember, my college was small (my class graduated with 118 success stories out of 151 attempts), and so was the faculty staff. Getting the best professor was not impossible as it can be in larger institutions, but every once in a while the class size limit would make things dicey. To accomodate this, anyone with a critical schedule need, or anyone who wanted to be a part of the group, would take part in this. Since the first victims were always this year's frosh (attempting to avoid any of various physicists for Electromagnetism and Optics class), and since the sophomore classes were large on a per-prof basis, the tight competition lead to "Frosh Campout," where, you guessed it, the freshmen would drag couches, televisions, computers (yes), and what-have-you out in front of the Office of the Registrar and wait until it opened the following day. There were never any porno movies shown, of course, and the year of the South Central LA Riots, the camp out (which was sanctioned by the Dean of Students) was moved inside, with Dean-sponsored pizza for everyone. Ah, the good old days.

I lived with a couple of other guys (Blayne, Thuc, and Kevin) for a while, and we lived in a dorm suite (pair-o-rooms) that we named "Club 101" after the beer game that we all played at least once a month. Simple. 101 shots of crappy beer in 101 minutes. There was a log book that went around, which if nothing else, provided hilarious handwriting samples as the time passed. We saw people puking up there guts after just 30 shots, one guy decided to do it with wine coolers and returned every ounce to a plastic bucket, and I myself tried to play one time by taking 1 shot of gin for every 10 shots of beer (this proved to be too boring, since I wasn't really involved but every 10 minutes). To make things more interesting, since it got really easy to drink a 12 pack of beer in 101 minutes (101 1.5 oz shots), we used Lucky Lager (with the rebuses for extra fun), we tried good beer before bad (Sam Adams for the first 20 shots, for example), SuperSchnapps starters (it was 101 proof, after all) and the all-time-low, starting off the evening with a shot of real Everclear. Eventually, Blayne hit 161 shots (or close) but doesn't remember it, and we all got so used to it that it became a pre-party event. Kevin never drank, by the way, but liked to keep close guard of the watch, since he would accelerate the timekeeping as he saw fit (that bastard).

Not to be outdone, my friend Dave Stepp decided to pull out all the stops. You see, there as this "Social Committee" that actually gave money (or loaned it more often) to various organizations, clubs, and dorms for the sole purpose of having alcohol at parties. Wow. But they decided they were getting a bad rap, so they wanted to fund non-alcoholic events. Dave, before all of this, attempted to drink five two-liter bottles of Doctor Pepper in one sitting (via a 4-oz shot glass) and failed miserably. Undaunted, he went to the social committee with a brave new idea. "PepperFest" they called it, and it would be the best of JackFest and Club 101, with full funding and no alcohol. Genius. I'll cut the story short with these bits of wisdom:

• Drinking 101 shots of anything without alcohol in it within 101 minutes is not fun, it is torture.
  
• Drinking that much carbonated, sweetened beverage is painful and unhealthy.
  
• Drinking that much Dr. Pepper was idiotic.
  
• People were throwing up all over the place, but no one was drunk at all.
  
• Craig Demel was sitting next to me, threw up behind our dorm, and returned with his own vomit stuck in his long hair. I almost lost it right there.
  
• I stopped at 80 or so and gave up, but decided I was more than capable of finishing this God-forsaken event. I thought I would surely lose consciousness as I pounded double shots of DP to catch up. I finished eventually, and that was the last Dr. Pepper I drank for years.
  
• The winner, Kirby Lawton, had drank the equivalent of 18 cans of Dr. Pepper, and received a trophy and a case of Dr. Pepper as a reward.
  
• That was the last time we tried anything that dumb. We returned to normal, alcoholic events immediately.

Whirling. A group of people (usually freshmen) gang up on and subdue their target, force him into the bathroom, and place his head into the toilet. Flushing follows. Women were not allowed to be whirled, unless they assisted in a whirling. Otherwise, they could be showered (which was infinitely more fun, anyway). `Nuf Said.

I had only seen one person actually attempt this one, since it is so incredibly dumb. The honor goes to Jeff McClellan, who made a good go of "The Harvey Mudd Triathalon." The events were simple taken separately, but together, well, that is another story. In this version, the unlikely athlete first gives at least (or at most?) one pint of blood, probably during a blood drive (unspecified). Next, quickly afterward, that same contestant drinks a six pack of beer as fast as he or she can (not necessarily pounding each one, but not sipping either). Finally, our hero attempts to run a mile. Jeff, that goofball who actually tried it, actually managed to drink all six beers and started running. He made it about 100 feet, to the grass in front of our dorm building, where he collapsed.

We had this silly excuse to avoid homework at that same institution, called "Five Class Competition." It was five since our school had a engineering management program for fifth-year engineers, and that team of about 4 people demanded to be recognized. Some of the events were Pizza Eating, Some sort of obstacle course, and a dunk tank where the president of the college sat as the last event. I actually participated on two occasions, the first being my freshman year, when one of the events was simply "Slide Rule," and I was apparently the only one in my class willing to admit to knowing how to use one. None of us were actually able to solve the problem, which was the ratio of two products (retrospectively, it was simple, but we were all under tremendous pressure at the time). The other one was Up-the-river-down-the-river, which was simply a beer-chugging contest with many people cascaded in a line. I had the unlucky fortune to be next to the anchor, Dean Bushik, who finished two beers as I was swallowing my first one. I almost choked, but I think we did okay. Honorable mentions go to my friend Tom Crevier during that freshman year team, when he took on the Computer Programming Event (programming on terminals connected remotely to our VAX...) and to Bill Gribble, who took on the Professor Look-Alike event, parting his hair down the middle and donning his thick glasses to look almost exactly like Professor Kari Karukstus.

There was this Donut shop in San Demas (about 12 miles from our campus) called Foster's Donuts (forced to change their name to DonutMan by the now-defunct Foster's Family Donuts) where we all went for what could have been the best donuts in the world (in our little version of it, at least). This spawned something called "Donut Ralley," which became a hightly organized team event. Here are the rules:

• Each team has a name and a car. The names and scores are tracked at Donut Central (our dorm lounge) via mandatory, periodic phone-ins.
  
• No maps or pre-scouting are allowed. Only previous knowledge or blind luck can be used.
  
• The event lasts for two hours.
  
• At each stop, at least 1 donut must be consumed for every two people in the car, on average.
  
• At every fifth stop, 1 donut must be eaten by every person in the car.
  
• At least one stop must be Foster's [DonutMan], at which place each person in the car must eat an entire cinnamon roll (a classically large item).
  
• Donuts must be consumed completely before entering the next donut shop.
  
• Each recorded stop (phoned in every 5th, and from Foster's) awards the respective team 1 donut credit.
  
• Speeding tickets are worth 1 donut credit.
  
• At the end of two hours, all teams return Donut Central to determine who is the winning team.
  
• The winning team receives one dozen donuts.