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!"
My masterpiece of mischief happened at the fraternity. One morning I woke up very early, about five o'clock, and couldn't go back to sleep, so I
went downstairs from the sleeping rooms and discovered some signs hanging on strings which said things like "DOOR! DOOR! WHO STOLE THE
DOOR?" I saw that someone had taken a door off its hinges, and in its place they hung a sign that said, "PLEASE CLOSE THE DOOR!"--the sign
that used to be on the door that was missing.
I immediately figured out what the idea was. In that room a guy named Pete Bernays and a couple of other guys liked to work very hard, and
always wanted it quiet. If you wandered into their room looking for something, or to ask them how
they did problem such and such, when you would
leave you would always hear these guys scream, "Please close the door!"
Somebody had gotten tired of this, no doubt, and had taken the door off. Now this room, it so happened, had two doors, the way it was built, so I
got an idea: I took
the other door off its hinges, carried it downstairs, and hid it in the basement behind the oil tank. Then I quietly went back upstairs
and went to bed.
Later in the morning I made believe I woke up and came downstairs a little late. The other guys were milling around, and Pete and his friends
were all upset: The doors to their room were missing, and they had to study, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was coming down the stairs and they said,
"Feynman! Did you take the doors?"
"Oh, yeah!" I said. "I took the door. You can see the scratches on my knuckles here, that I got when my hands scraped
against the wall as I was
carrying it down into the basement."
They weren't satisfied with my answer; in fact, they didn't believe me.
The guys who took the first door had left so many clues--the handwriting on the signs, for instance--that they were soon found out. My idea was
that when it was found out who stole the first door, everybody would think they also stole the other door. It worked perfectly: The guys who took the
first door were pummeled and tortured and worked on by everybody, until finally, with much pain and difficulty, they convinced their tormentors that
they
had only taken one door, unbelievable as it might be.
I listened to all this, and I was happy.
The other door stayed missing for a whole week, and it became more and more important to the guys who were trying to study in that room that
the other door be found.
Finally, in order to solve the problem, the president of the fraternity says at the dinner table, "We have to solve this problem of t he other door. I
haven't been able to solve the problem myself, so I would like suggestions from the rest of you as to how to straighten this out, because Pete and the
others are trying to study."
Somebody
makes a suggestion, then someone else.
After a little while, I get up and make a suggestion. "All right," I say in a sarcastic voice, "whoever you are who stole the door, we know you're
wonderful. You're so
clever
! We can't figure out
who
you are, so you must be some sort of super-genius. You don't have t o tell us who you are; all we
want to know is where the door is. So if you will leave a note somewhere, telling us where the door is,
we will honor you and admit
forever
that you
are a super-marvel, that you are so
smart
that you could take the other door without our being able to figure out who you are. But for God's sake, just
leave the note somewhere, and we will be forever grateful to you for it."
The next guy makes his suggestion: "I have another idea," he says. "I think that you, as president, should ask each man on his word of honor
towards the fraternity to say whether he took the door or not."
The president says, "That's a
very
good idea. On the fraternity word of honor!"
So he goes around the table, and asks each guy, one by one: "Jack,
did
you
take the door?"
"No, sir, I did not take the door."
"Tim: Did
you
take the door?"
"No, sir! I did not take the door!"
"Maurice. Did
you
take the door?"
"No, I did not take the door, sir."
"Feynman, did
you
take the door?"
"Yeah,
I
took the door."
"Cut it out, Feynman; this is
serious
! Sam! Did
you
take the door . . ." --it went all the way around. Everyone was
shocked
. There must be some
real
rat
in the fraternity who didn't respect the fraternity word of honor!
That night I left a note with a little picture of the oil tank and the door next to it, and the next day they found the door and put it back.
Sometime later I finally admitted to taking the other door, and I was accused by everybody of lying. They couldn't remember what I had said. All
they could remember was their conclusion after the president of the fraternity had gone around the table and asked everybody,
that nobody admitted
taking the door. The idea they remembered, but not the words.
People often think I'm a faker, but I'm usually honest, in a certain way--in such a way that often nobody believes me!
