Karl, my room-mate from the Air Force Academy. He flies Boeing 757/767s for American Airlines now, which is headquartered in Dallas. The one thing I've always admired about Karl as a pilot is that he can really hold his liquor.

Karl and I began our second year at the Blue Zoo by giving everyone who entered our room a wedgie, the two of us furiously yanking each victim up off his feet by the underwear until it was wedged firmly up the crack of his butt. Then we would mark our "kill" on a board by our door. We quickly became wedgie aces with five quick kills and were well on our way to our Blue Max (15 kills) when, inexplicably, people stopped stepping through our door.

Undeterred, we developed new weapons and tactics to continue our reign of terror against our classmates. Karl was fond of Ding Dongs which he kept in an open box from which many a passerby would filch one, prompting complaints from Karl. So one night I cut the back off one with a hunting knife, ate the cream inside, filled it up with menthol shaving cream, and then carefully melted the chocolate back. I wrapped it back up like new, placed it in the box where Karl would pick it up first. Then I waited.

Karl came back from the library and grabbed the Ding Dong as I casually meandered toward the door. I took off running as soon as he bit into the shaving cream and gave out a yell. I was certain upon mature reflection that Karl would see the humor in this, though perhaps not immediately. Sure enough, after fifteen minutes and a short foot chase, Karl said, "We need to do this to somebody else." That's why Karl and I got along so well. We both enjoyed poisoning people.

Our first victim was disappointing. Markoe was a nice guy who we easily tricked into accepting a doctored Ding Dong. We felt guilty about pulling such a mean stunt on poor Markoe but the feeling passed and gave way to curiosity when we couldn't find him. When we finally quizzed him about how he liked the Ding Dong, he shrugged his shoulders and said it was good. He said the filling was awfully minty.

Well, that wasn't the effect that we were shooting for so we went back to the drawing board and bought ExLax, carefully melting it into the back of three Ding Dongs. Our first victim was George, another nice guy. He gulped down the Ding Dong right before we joined the noon formation to march to lunch at the massive dining hall.

Later he told us what had happened, unaware that we were the perpetrators of his distress. It hit him in the middle of his first class after lunch. He felt the need to go but you can not go anywhere in class at the United States Air Force Academy until you are dismissed at the end of the hour. Poor George crossed his legs and recrossed his legs and bit his lip and pinched his butt cheeks as the pressure inexorably built to a throbbing crescendo. When at long last dismissed, he left his books and heel-sprinted to the nearest latrine. George said it was like a door opening. We drew a Ding Dong kill on our door board.

Delighted with our success, we fed a Ding Dong to John "Uranus", a nice enough guy but something of a by-the-book military myrmidon. Uranus dropped out of sight for a couple days. When I finally knocked on his door, his room had a sick smell in it and poor Uranus was lying in his bed with a defeated expression on his face. The dispensary had diagnosed him with "gastrointestinal influenza" and put him on bedrest. I knew that he was perfectly healthy but the doctor had told him he was sick so he accepted it and acted sick. There is a profound life lesson encapsulated therein about accepting too readily other people's opinion of you.

This was an alarming development which prompted Karl and I to cease our secret insurgency before we were found out and dealt the punishment we deserved. We erased the Ding Dong kill. However, somewhere in the confusion, the last Ding Dong disappeared. Its destination remains a mystery, its story untold.

I'd like to say we had sense enough to give up there but I began investigating phenolthalein, a liquid tasteless laxative that seemed an ideal addition to our Air Office Commanding's coffeepot. He was a nasty little captain who had flown OV-10s in Vietnam. I thought a good purging would improve his disposition. Fortunately, the end of the semester stopped us from evolving into full-blown serial killers.

Karl waited a few years before he told Uranus about the ExLax Ding Dong. Sometimes comedy has to age, like fine wine, until all the sediment settles and it acquires that mellow taste. If you serve it too soon, before its time, it can have a bitter taste instead of that sweetness that comes from long years in the deep dark cave, you know what I mean?