When I was a student at Lambuth College, I regularly ate lunch and dinner in the cafeteria. I’m not much of a breakfast guy and was always waiting until the last minute to make it to that first class of the day. The cafeteria was a gathering place for most of the people on campus. If you wanted to get a message to everyone on campus, making an announcement during the normal mealtimes was your best bet for getting it to the most people. Everyone who stayed on campus was required to participate in the meal plan, but we still had some people from off campus that ate their too. Many of the faculty were regulars for lunch. Then there were some other people that we weren’t sure why they were there. I’m going to focus on someone that I’ll just refer to as The Odd Guy.
The Odd Guy appeared to be older than the traditional just out of high school student. He didn’t sit at a table with anyone although they had long lines of tables sitting end to end and he might end up down the table from where some of my friends and I would occasionally sit. Because we never saw him talking to anyone either, we weren’t sure if he was a student or not. Maybe he was someone from the neighborhood who liked to eat there. Often, he was wearing gym shorts or looked like he had been running or working out. He looked like an athletic big guy, not a lot of muscle tone, like someone who might have played on the line on his high school football team. His hair was in straight, and he wore it in bangs. He always seemed a little sweaty which is why I thought he had just come from working out.
Some of the guys that I regularly ate with had been watching him and noticed some of his eating habits. The cafeteria always had pudding for dessert, and he always got the chocolate pudding. They also noticed that he always got the dish that had the most in it. Someone got the idea of scooping out the pudding from one of the dishes, putting a tennis ball in it and covering it with the pudding. Someone did this and took the dish back to the line. The odd guy was just coming through the line but didn’t notice anyone tampering with the dishes of pudding. He did notice that it had more in it than any other dish and immediately grabbed it.
We were lined up watching him eat. When it came time for his pudding, he got a small amount from the top of the pile to taste. Next, he plunged his spoon into the pile of chocolate. The spoon went down the side of the ball, forcing the ball over the side of the dish where it plopped on the table. We were able to pay enough attention to enjoy the perfectly executed prank without getting called out. We never tried this trick again and the odd guy continued to eat there. I’m not sure if he changed how he selected his pudding.