Where There's Smoke, There's Fire

Let me preface this post by saying that the names of the people in this posting other than mine have been changed to protect the morons that took part in this stupid act. It's 1986, my junior year at Ohio State University. I'm living in my fraternity house with 70 other animals. It's a Saturday night in the springtime when a lot of fraternity houses have their Rush Weekends. Rush Weekend is when fraternities invite high school seniors for a weekend of drinking and carousing as to entice them into becoming members the next year when they are freshman. The fraternity house directly behind our fraternity house was primarily a Jewish house like mine. So we competed for the same Jewish kids from the high schools. So this weekend, the house behind us is having their Rush Weekend which culminates with a big party Saturday night. It's about 1:00 A.M. and 3 of my buddies and me are hanging out in our fraternity parking lot. We can see the party is going on and 2 of my buddies, John and Gary are just staring at their house. My other buddy Bruce and I are wondering what they are thinking about. By the way, not a shock, we all had consumed quite a bit of "Sodas" this night. John pulls out a lighter and starts playing with it. I say "What the hell are you doing? Stop playing with that" Then, Gary says "Let's light their dumpster on fire" Bruce and myself say "Shut up! You're not going to start a fire" Next thing you know, John is lighting a piece of paper held by Gary and they throw it into the dumpster. The dumpster didn't just catch of fire, it became engulfed in flames!!!!  We take off back to our house and soon the fire department is there with 3 trucks putting out the fire. HOLY @#$@#$@#!!!  The 4 of us are basically hiding in the house praying no one saw us. Well, for the next 3 weeks, the word going around campus is that Danny, yes me, started this fire and is an arsonist!  HOLY ^&*$ &*# !!!!!  part 2!  Amazingly, and stupidly after hearing this news, we all are still keeping our mouths shut.After 2 weeks of this, the fraternity house that had the fire calls Bruce( who was also our house Vice President) and say they know its Danny and if he doesn't turn himself in, they going to the police. This is not good!  Bruce, who is one of my closest friends to this day, is a true man in my eyes. Instead of turning me in to save his, John and Gary's asses, tells the fraternity house that how about they be reasonable and we come over to apologize. They agree. Well, the 4 of us go over one night to talk to their entire house. We elected Gary, who by the way was the actual arsonist, to speak for us. Gary is a character and has a way with words. Well, Gary goes into how we are all Jewish brothers and we need to stick together, blah, blah, blah...by the time, he's done the entire fraternity is giving us a standing ovation and back slapping us. Unbelievable!  To this day, I will remind all of the participants about that night and how I almost got arrested for arson.