the great goblin heist
a story about when we risked it all for a pack of sour punch straws
At first I thought it was a bomb.
But after a few days of passing by, I got used to seeing the brown box outside my dorm building. It kind of felt like a doorman.
Then, the package found its way indoors. As the suspicious box sat in the foyer-staircase area, I wondered if this was an infiltration tactic by a very small person hiding under the box. But as it sat there in purgatory, absorbing the crisp New England fall breeze whenever the door swung open, it once again began to blend into its landscape.
My interest in it never completely went away.
Though as someone with a healthy amount of paranoia, it took a few weeks before I finally mustered up the courage to be nosy. Once the sun had set, I put on my least suspicious looking outfit and headed downstairs. Double checking that I wasn’t being spied on, I took a closer look at who the package was intended for.
It was addressed to Brown.
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Curiosity piqued, I typed the delivery address into Google Maps, and lo and behold, it pointed to some obscure alley within the university grounds.
Notice how the title does not mention death? That’s probably because I decided against exploring a random back alley for “the sake of adventure!”. Instead, I put the box back down, sufficiently convinced that it had been some sort of delivery error.
Enough snooping for now…
But life is lived on a probability spectrum. And knowing that the box was both intended for Brown and misdelivered meant that a file transfer had occurred between the “keep-it-to-myself” part of my brain and the “to-share-with-a-close-confidant” cortex.
Enter G and C.
The two of them came over late that night to play Fifa.
I offhandedly brought the box to their attention as I let them into the building:
R: That box has been there for weeks.
G+C: Oh, how come no one grabs it?
R: I think it's meant for Brown. Also, it's at a completely incorrect address that I’m not sure even exists.
Of course, no person would think of opening a package not addressed to them. But when G and C are around, we’re not people. We are mind goblins.
G+C: So you’re saying it's no one’s.
R: Yeah, it seems like it. People from facilities walk past these stairs all the time and haven’t touched it.
Let’s open it.
We took out a key and sliced the box open. The moment that I had been dreaming of for weeks.
We were met with a Russian doll situation: boxes within boxes. That didn’t faze us. We grabbed the top-most box and sprinted upstairs to my suite. We would come back for the rest of our spoils soon.
There was good weight to the smaller box. We placed it on the table. My imagination fluttered. Never had the range of possibilities been so vast. Would it be sheets of paper? Ketchup packets? Literal gold?
In that moment, repercussions did not matter. We were in college. It was our right to engage in nonsense, and if necessary, face the consequences of our actions together. As the cardboard flaps unfurled, our eyes bulged as we stared upon stacks and stacks of wealth equal to its weight in diamonds:
strawberry. sour. punch. straws.
We knew what we had to do next. G and C raced out the room and literally jumped down two flights of stairs (I’m talking two-footed broad jumps), before scampering back upstairs like the little goblins they are. Then we grabbed-slit-opened, grabbed-slit-opened our way into three boxes of happiness.
As elite alpha males, we felt as though this was exactly the rush our ancestors felt while hunting down lions or small elderly rabbits or whatever. We rationed our kill, which came out to be twenty-seven sour packs each.
81 total points. The greatest scoring performance of the modern era.
I thought a near hundred packets would last us at least a semester. We finished them off in less than two weeks.
My close friends at Brown have all heard this story before, but I’ve recently felt a desire to share this story with the rest of the world.
I think I have an idea why.
I used to tell this story to win over some laughs.
Now, I feel as though the story is transforming into a vessel for nostalgia. The act of sharing this story now extends beyond mere entertainment. I share this as an attempt at preservation as I try to keep the flame of these cherished memories alive.
Then again, maybe I’m assigning arbitrary meanings to things.
Maybe I’m just craving some sour straws.
Was this mischievous act worth the two weeks of overindulgence and increased risk of early onset diabetes and heart disease? Or even better, the risk of Brown catching us red-handed in our thievery and demanding compensation? Probably not.
But I do know one thing is for certain:
As long as sour punch straws continue to sell in convenience stores, I will always remember the pure child-like joy I shared with my closest friends during the Great Goblin Heist.