Raiding

Back in college we were always up to fraternity/sorority pranking and nonsense.  One of the most childish and silly things we did was something called "raiding", which was really nothing more than sanctioned but harmless vandalism where a sorority would sneak around in the dark of night to all the fraternities (or vice versa) and commit benign acts of vandalism such as toilet papering trees, painting windows with washable paint, forking the lawns and inflitrating the houses and stealing that chapter's special crests and photo composites.  There were rules about what you could and couldn't do (no food like eggs, no permanent paint, nothing dangerous, etc.) and it was all in good fun.  Although many people assume that all people in Greek houses do is drink and party and something like raiding would seem like drunken antics, it was the opposite...no underage person with a brain would run the streets like that while under the influence! 

 

When we planned a raid everyone who wanted to go would gather at the house in dark clothes and then we would make preparations, such as painting "warpaint" on our faces with tempra paint and filling water balloons.  Many of the more serious, mature and studious girls skipped raiding...and, believe it or not, I wasn't one of them! Week nights were the best nights to act because there was a better chance that the fraternity guys would be sleeping at 1 or 2 a.m. and not awake to catch us and dump buckets of water out the windows on our heads or retaliate by emptying bags of raked leaves on our front step. Or climbing in a window and stealing the furniture and putting it on the front lawn.  Or taking their roommates' clothes or mattress and throwing it on the roof of our house...

 

It had been awhile since I thought about raiding but was reminded last week when I came upon this scene in the hallway...

 

 

He TP'd the hallway!  I will start to worry if he starts taking picture frames and mementos from around the house and making me sing dirty songs to get them back or painting "Ben <3 mom="mom" nbsp="nbsp" on="on" p="p" s="s" the="the" windows.="windows.">
Thanks for sending me on a journey down memory lane Ben!