The Sliding Door Story

Okay, this story happened back when I was in college. (Sadly a loooooong time ago. When Star Wars was still awesome and before Van Halen became Van Hagar.) Freshman year, I think, maybe early sophomore year. I had a circle of friends that I palled around with. We spent time hanging out in the dorm rec rooms, going to movies, eating, whatever. Two of my friends, let’s call them Mr. X and Ms. Y were dating.

Now that was kind of cool because it was sort of an innocent time for all of us. It was nice that two of the friends in the circle got together, at least for a time. But in reality, we didn’t really know each other all that well. So it came as kind of a shock when I got a frantic call from Ms. Y or one of the circle saying that the group was hanging out in the dorm rec room when Mr. X was carted away by the campus cops.

This caused great speculation amongst the group. Who was Mr. X, really? At this point, we were all hanging out so much, when did he even have the time to do anything illegal?  At first, I told her it had to be a mistake, but no, she said they had his name.  It was him, whatever it was.  The cops kept Mr. X for hours and our speculation got increasingly hyperbolic.  Was he selling weed?  Maybe he beat someone up.  Was it something really fucked up he did at home?  Was his name really Mr. X?

I vaguely remember that he was out of the mix for a while, like all day.  That was kind of an eternity to us at the time because all our social time was spent around the circle.  Naturally, we were all up in the same dorm rec room speculating when Mr. X walked in with an embarrassed smile on his face.

“What the Hell happened to you?  What did you do?”

With a face as beet red as I had every seen anyone’s, he explained that the previous night he had gone to see Ms. Y in her dorm.  Ms. Y lived in the towers and the first floor had sliding doors to the outside.  Now the sliding doors weren’t meant to be entrances.  But I think the main door was locked or he was just too lazy to walk around, so he slipped into the first floor via one of the doors.  It was dark, so he assumed Ms. Y was asleep, so being considerate, he kind of crept around trying to determine if she was awake or not.

Unfortunately, Mr. X had slipped into the wrong dorm room in the dark.  Sleeping in that room was the RA and his girlfriend.  The RA jumped up to attack what he thought was an intruder.  Mr. X panicked and fled the scene, never once breathing a word to any of us even after he got arrested.  How did he get caught?  Mr. X had a baseball cap he wore constantly, but lost it in the struggle.  The dumbass would’ve gotten away clean, but he had his name written on the inside of the brim.  There was some talk of expulsion, but eventually he did some community service and all was forgiven.

Anyhow, that’s today in Braux Pas history!