Confession is Good for the Soul, If Not the Wallet

What’s the statute of limitations on an April Fools joke? If the Housing Office at Princeton Seminary ever finds out about this, I’ll make restitution because that’s the right thing to do. But this is as much bragging as it is confession, I have to admit.

March 31, 1997, 11:30PM. A fellow seminarian down the hall from me appears in the door to my dorm room. “I hear you know electronics.” Yeah, I took a class in undergrad, and I’ve worked with my dad’s remodeling business. A sly smile spreads across his face as he shares his idea for a great April Fools prank. I smile back. Let’s give it a shot.

We get on the elevator, pull the stop switch (which has no alarm for the sake of people moving in and out of the dorm), and proceed to open the control panel. The panel wiring uses slip-on connectors, not hard-soldered connections, so this should be a cinch. I trace the various wires, determining which ones are to the button light and which ones send the signals. It’s a four-story building, so this shouldn’t be too complicated. My co-conspirator (whose identity I will never divulge to the seminary) and I do a little figuring, and reconnect the wires so that the elevator won’t go to the floor you call for, nor to the floor above or below it.

The morning of April 1. My dorm room is near the elevator, and I had only one morning class that day, so I’m enjoying the morning reading in my room, hearing the elevator doors open, and someone exclaiming, “What the-?” It was particularly frustrating for Linda, who was trying to do laundry in the basement and every time she got into the elevator on the 3rd floor and pushed (B) it would take her up to the fourth floor. The fourth or fifth time it happens I hear a string of four-letter words as she storms off the elevator, through the door and down the fire stairs. I understood the reaction: she was, after all, Irish.

On my way back to my room after my one class, I run into an Otis Elevator repair person the seminary had called in. Worried that my co-conspirator and I endangered people, I ask what’s up. “The elevator’s broken”, he replies. “Nothing bad, the elevator just doesn’t go to the right floor.”

I put on my most innocent face as I comment how, given today was April 1, it sounds like an April Fools prank. “Nah, it’s gotta be a bad call switch in the basement” he grunts. “No one would know how to rewire an elevator to do that.”

The fact I’d pranked my fellow seminarians was great; the fact that in five minutes with an Allen wrench and a pair of needle-nosed pliers I’d done something a certified elevator repair technician charging $100/hour said no one could do just made it epic. And the fact the seminary paid $100/hour to fix the elevator made sure I couldn’t take credit for my BEST. PRANK. EVER.

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