Yesterday, instead of studying for the two AP tests I took today like any good and dilligent boy would do, I went to the Hi-Q dinner instead (well, naturally!). It was a rip-off event with tickets costing $50 just to see Alex Trebek talk for a while and try to crack jokes (some of which were funny). The young fellows forming a fellowship at the table threw some wit here, threw some wit there; they threw some wit, everywhere. Okay, I’ll stop that. But the coolest part was when after we ate dinner and sat around like hobbits doing nothing, Dave built this structure out of the diningware, and I suddenly recalled this one particular story that Feynman told like a Ford SUV.
You see, I would desperately like to tell you the story, but I know I would probably slaughter it like how a slaughterhouse (5) slaughters the sloth’s laughters (Don’t worry, it doesn’t make sense to me either—I just wanted to see how many times I can use slaughter-like words in a sentence [ie. Slaughter]). Therefore, I’m letting the old man himself tell the story—Feynman!
While this is an exceprt, it’s a really long excerpt and is probably illegal to mirror it here so I’m just going to say that this is for educational purposes and that I am somehow protected under the fair use act. (Another site mirrors it on the internet too!):
“When I was a junior or a senior I used to eat at a certain restaurant in Boston. I went there by myself, often on successive evenings. People got to know me, and I had the same waitress all the time.
“I noticed that they were always in a hurry, rushing around, so one day, just for fun, I left my tip, which was usually ten cents (normal for those days), in two nickels, under two glasses: I filled each glass to the very top, dropped a nickel in, and with a card over it, turned it over so it was upside down on the table. Then I slipped out the card (no water leaks out because no air can come in - the rim is too close to the table for that).
“I put the tip under two glasses because I knew they were always in a hurry. If the tip was a dime in one glass, the waitress, in her haste to get the table ready for the next customer, would pick up the glass, the water would spill out, and that would be the end of it. But after she does that with the first glass, what the hell is she going to do with the second one? She can’t just have the nerve to lift it up now!
“On the way out I said to my waitress, ‘Be careful, Sue. There’s something funny about the glasses you gave me - they’re filled in on the top, and there’s a hole on the bottom!’
“The next day I came back, and I had a new waitress. My regular waitress wouldn’t have anything to do with me. ‘Sue’s very angry at you,’ my new waitress said, ‘After she picked up the first glass and water went all over the place, she called the boss out. They studied it a little bit, but they couldn’t spend all day figuring out what to do, so they finally picked up the other one, and water went out again, all over the floor. It was a terrible mess; Sue slipped later in the water. They’re all mad at you.’
“I laughed.
“She said, ‘It’s not funny! How would you like it if someone did that to you - what would you do?’
“‘I’d get a soup plate and then slide the glass very carefully over to the edge of the table, and let the water run into the soup plate - it doesn’t have to run onto the floor. Then I’d take the nickel out.’
“‘Oh, that’s a good idea,’ she said.
“That evening I left my tip under a coffee cup, which I left upside down on the table.
“The next night I came and I had the same new waitress.
“‘What’s the idea of leaving the cup upside down last time?’
“‘Well, I thought that even though you were in a hurry, you’d have to go back into the kitchen and get a soup plate; then you’d have to sloooowly and carefully slide the cup over to the edge of the table…’
“‘I did that,” she complained, ‘but there was no water in it!’”
—Richard P. Feynman
Isn’t he amazing? Well, anyway, after I attempted to tell the story to Dave, he wanted to actually pull the prank off! You see, many times I suggest outrageous things, but I don’t actually intend to carry them out so I was suprised when Dave started to pick up a big wine glass and fill it up with water. I was thinking: “Oh no, we’re all going to die. He’s going to turn over the cup, and it’s not going to work, and we are going to get a huge-ass puddle on our table that everyone and their grandmom is going to stare at for the rest of the night!”
After Dave prepared the wine glass and borrowed other people’s water to do fill it up to the top, we kind of just sat there looking at the glass. You see, it’s really kind-of dangerous to flip a wine glass filled with water around! So Dave used the tea dish to try to create a base on the top so that we could flip it over. But still, I didn’t think it would work, and we decided not to continue with the wine glass.
But, that doesn’t mean we quit! By golly, you can say: “Peter Pan Picked a Pickle” 20 times and we wouldn’t even quit. Go ahead and try it if you don’t believe me. Do it and see for yourself. No, I’m not kidding. I suggested trying the prank on something of less caliber first like filling up only half the wine glass. Luckily, Dave decided to use the smaller mug instead. He transferred the water over and the tea dish fit perfectly. Lest I bore you incessantly, I devised a method of turning over the mug-dish system with the table as a helper so Dave could get his thumbs off of the plate so a disaster wouldn’t happen. We were pretty happy that it worked and then decided to turn over the other cups at the table and arrange them in a line so that it didn’t look suspicious.
We reasoned that in their haste, the waiters would start picking up the cups and then get to the filled cup, be suprised by the water, and then carefully examine the other ones. We also decided to write a riddle-like note to give the waiter clues on which cup was the “special” one. I threw out some ideas, but overall, it was Dave that created the rhymes and riddle feel:
Choose ye wisely to lift each cup
Examine with care before you lift up
Not that you would make mistakes
The one is real, the four are fakes,
Edges of tables hold the key
Right the cup, water free
This part was added a little after the picture was taken:
Long live Richard P. Feynman!
The clue to the location of the water filled cup is to take the first letter of each line to the riddle-poem. We thought that was pretty cool! We pinned the note on this sign-holding apparatus in the middle of the table since we hoped that it would catch the attention of the clean-up waiters.
Unfortunately, we serverely underestimated the waiter’s abilities. Afterwards, when we were observing clean up, this male waiter came to our table and immediately picked up the center cup. The water flew out and probably drenched a good bit of the table :). For a second, he froze in utter surprise. Then, he just went on picking the rest of the cups up without even hesitating! He didn’t even read the note either!
Therefore, although the prank wasn’t as great as we thought it would be, we realized that next time, we have to fill two or more cups to get their attention or have one of the cups explode or something. It was an enjoyable night although I did not stay for the Alex Trebek photos since I had two AP tests to take the next day!
