PENNY JAM

Back in 1972 as a freshman at Marietta College I was the victim of a prank. Here's what happened.

I lived in Parsons Hall in suite 301. The suite consisted of four separate rooms, two rooms on each side with a shared bathroom at the end of the hallway. One late afternoon I was in the bathroom taking a shower when someone came in and took my towel and left the bathroom.

I then heard some pounding on the side of the door and realized that I was being "pennied in".
Someone (I believe it was that evil junior Rickey D. Irvin) was wedging several pennies into the door jam (pennied in).

What to do. Although it wasn't my birthday, I was wearing my birthday suit. Being stuck in a bathroom has advantages and disadvantages. I had plenty of water and temporarily a private bathroom and toilet. Suite 301 was on the third story and there weren't any trees near the bathroom window so I couldn't safely climb out the window and it was too far up to safely jump. The bathroom window faced a street but this area wasn't frequented by many people walking by so I couldn't yell for assistance with much success. What to do.

I decided my first asset to speed my release was to use one of the most common elements found in a bathroom, water. I stopped up the drain of both sinks with paper towels and let the water start to flow over the sink, out onto the bathroom floor and then under the bathroom door out into the hallway and into the rooms of the suite. Just as in the bible in the time of Noah and the ark when God made it rain for 40 days and nights to cleanse the evil behavior of mankind; I on a much smaller scale used a mini flood to stop the evil Rickey D. Irvin.

It worked. The other people in the suite didn't like the water going into their rooms so they begged the evil Rickey D. Irvin to release Rickshaw from the bathroom; they said "Please Rickey D. make the water stop". Under pressure from the others, the evil Rickey D. Irvin took the pennies from out of the door jam , I had my freedom, and the waters started to recede.

I'm a tough guy, don't mess with the Rickshaw.