hard to hide the kid inside

College students like my son are dealing with the stress of final exams this week and next. He told me something they did to loosen things up in his dorm. The story begins at the end of the fall semester when a girl on his floor ate an entire package of Oreos during exam week. She felt guilty about it and confessed to all her floormates.

When school resumed in January, my son and his friends began plotting. They used their extra meal plan points to buy packages of Oreos from the campus convenience store. At first they planned to leave a small pile of America's favorite cookies outside the girl's door. Momentum started to build and more students got involved in the plot. The idea changed from a pile to a pyramid. Each week, they bought more Oreos and hid them inside their empty suitcases. All the while they kept their purchases secret from the victim of their prank.



As the number of Oreo packages grew, tasks were assigned to each individual. When my son described it to me, I thought it sounded like the first season of "Prison Break." My son and another engineering student were to design a plan for stacking 144 packages. Someone else would be the lookout while somebody organized the transfer of cookies like a reverse bucket brigade.



A date was chosen for the denouement. The girl in question would soon return from track practice. While she was in the shower, the Oreos would not be stacked in a pyramid. Instead they decided to wall in her doorway. They figured out how to leave space for the door handle. When the girl opened her door and saw the blockade, she used that space to deliver a one-finger greeting to her friends.