**The following story is from my senior year in high school. It is a long story and I enjoy looking back on it. I also look back at it and see a lot of who I am and was.

Previous attempts at Senior Pranks at my high school had never left much of an impression. They were cool and all but nothing had gone way over the line. This was probably a good thing. A Volkswagen station wagon was rebuilt around a tree. A giant, temporary fishpond was set up in the quad. One group attempted to bring hay bails and sheep to the quad but they were caught before they could get their supplies to the school. One fall, a GIANT pumpkin was thrown into the pool. These were all amusing and mostly harmless. We didn't intend to come up with the prank to end all pranks but we wanted to have a little fun and get some revenge on a most disliked teacher.

While brainstorming, we came up with the idea of breaking into the classroom of Mr. Dunne, our Civics teacher. We thought of hiding tuna in the desks that would only be found when the room became warm and began to smell. We also thought of other things to do to his room but we had the good sense to realize that we didn't want any vandalism charges brought against us if we were caught. We decided that filling the room with crumpled up newspapers was the way to go.

Filling a room with paper is not easy. First, it takes a lot of newspapers. We began raiding our families recycling bins early and often. My car, a '69 Volkswagen Bus, was ideal for hauling the newspapers and people to our "safe house." My friend Glen's house got that designation because his parents and brother were out of town for the weekend. Another issue involved getting into the room. We solved that by getting a copy of the master key early in the year from the ASB office where some of us worked in student government (another story). One of the trickiest aspects was getting the right group of people involved. We didn't want a mob scene because that would easily get out of control and risk exposure. The more people who knew about it, the more mouths there were to blab our plans to others who might want to join up or who might reveal our plan to the wrong people. The group ended up being about 15 people. Some of our friends were left out and we felt bad but we also didn't want to risk getting them in trouble. Were we altruistic or what?

On the night of the "raid," we made several runs to the school to drop off supplies, mostly newspapers. When we were finally ready to go, we drove about 4 cars down to house near the school where most everyone piled into my bus. I drove into the school bus drop-off circle and people streamed out of my car and headed for the classroom, located near the front of the campus. Two people remained in the car with me and we went to park the car in a separate location from the house/meeting point near the school. As we walked back to the school, we felt nervous and Jamey seemed ready to bolt at any moment. Walking up to the school, we looked at a diagram of the campus that had lights on every building. This diagram was mounted out front for emergency personnel to reference if something was wrong at the school. A red light on a building meant a fire and a blue light meant an alarm had been tripped. This was a known security risk and we had a plan for it. If the police did show up, we would sit quietly in the rooms, hiding in the shadows. The doors to all the rooms would be locked and it would look like a false alarm. Because the windows on the doors were not clear, shining a flashlight in a window would yield little to no information. Voila, done deal!

As we approached the door to the classroom, we were on the outside of the chain link fence into the school. Jamey had veered off towards the diagram and was freaking out about the blue light that he saw shining on the building we were in. Darrin and I saw a head in the door and told the head that the alarm had been tripped.

"We know," he said.

"Ok, good," we replied.

Somehow, that idea that they knew the police had been summoned was not unsettling to us. It was then that we saw the black and white police car drive by, lights off, heading for the bus circle, about 150 yards behind us. Immediately, I was on the ground, in the ivy, and Darrin, who had also hit the deck, was whispering/yelling that the cops were here. The next thing I know, Darrin is scaling the fence and heading into campus and away from the police car. I realize that this is a good idea and follow. The idea of remaining in the classroom disappeared from most everyone's head and we see them stream out of the doors of the building as we run by. One of the most surreal images of the evening came when this group of about a dozen boys was sprinting across an open courtyard and one of them tripped, hit the ground, did a single somersault, and continued running like nothing had happened. We sprinted to the opposite end of campus and hid behind the outfield fence of the baseball field. While trying to catch our breath and figure out who was accounted for, we realized we were in a fairly open area and headed out in groups of two in a highly intricate, yet unsophisticated, path that led us across a field, over the football bleachers, under the press box, over to the track and field equipment shed, *back* to the baseball field, and finally across the street into an orchard. My partner and I felt that going deeper into the orchard would be our best way of hiding but we encountered deep mud and decided against that idea. We found out later that the patch of mud was probably only about 20 square feet and we just happened to hit it in the darkness. The rest of the orchard was bone dry.

Eleven of us made it back to the house near the school. I learned that three people remained in the room, sticking to the original plan. Jamey had disappeared and none of us really knew where he might be. The last anyone had seen of him, he was losing it in front of the diagram. The rest of the night was spent looking for Jamey and worrying about Steve, Matt and Greg, the three who had remained behind.

To be concluded...