my finest hour(s)

I am the proud winner of Andrea's Silliest Thing contest. Yes yes, please applaud. I was relating this honor to David tonight, and a wave of other, even sillier, perhaps, incidents came to my mind.

One summer in college (I think it was after my junior year, but maybe not) our ward was divided up into four teams for various activities. The winning team at each activity would receive temporary custody of a lawn chair. This was no ordinary lawnchair, either. It was one of those cool ones with the folding back and leg rest that are nearly impossible to situate in such a manner as to be remotely comfortable. Anyways, the winning team was supposed to decorate the lawn chair with their team colors and bring it back to the next activity, where the competition would resume and the cycle continue. We were the yellow team. Now my roommates and I, as well as a couple of the guys on our team, really got into the idea of the team. We all got yellow lensed sunglasses and wore yellow shirts when possible. We even came up with a cheer.

"Bananas UNITE!
Bananas SPLIT!
Go, Bananas! Go go bananas!
Go, Bananas! Go go bananas!

There was even a little dance to go along with the cheer.

So, after one of the activities, we thought we had been wrongfully robbed of the lawnchair, which instead went to the blue team, and ended up at Aaron's
house. (We were all single then, though his wife Katie was in our ward. I can't remember if she was part of the yellow team.) We decided we should reclaim what was rightfully ours. We dressed all in black, unpeeled many bananas, loaded up our mustard, and headed over. I'd gone over earlier and snuck down to Aaron's bedroom in the basement and made sure the window was unlocked. A couple of the girls were in charge of "decorating" the sidewalk with the banana peels and mustard while I snuck in through the window. It was one of those small basement windows, so I was doing some good yoga maneuvers to get in and out, but we got it! I passed it out to an accomplice, then climbed back through the window, and we ran to the car. Our getaway driver, Rebecca, was SO EXCITED (and this did happen frequently) that as soon as we were nearly all in, she honked a few victory beeps on the horn. Unfortunately, Aaron and a friend were quicker than would have seemed possible, and they pieced together the puzzle really quickly, and lay down in front of and behind the tires of the car. We were furious, and Rebecca was kicking herself for giving us away. We tried everything we could think of to get out of there, but we weren't willing to play chicken with these guys' heads, so after about 40 minutes of standoff, we caved and returned the chair. Only after requiring that they take our picture with the chair in the car as proof that we nearly succeeded in our mission.


I actually have a couple of photos of this. If I find them, I'll have David scan them in and post them.