How the world has changed -- a Halloween memory

 It was 1980, and I was in college in upstate New York.  I was casually dating a guy named Tom.  My roommate Ellen was dating Kenny.   Neither Tom nor Kenny was a student at my college, they both attended neighboring schools.

It was Friday night, just a few days before Halloween.  There was a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in one of the lecture halls.  Tom, Ellen and I planned to drive home to Long Island for the weekend after the movie.

We walked across the campus to the dorm where Ellen and I were living.  We left the guys in the lobby of the building while we went to our room to change our clothes, get the rice out of our hair, and grab our suitcases.

When we got back to the lobby, the guys told us "Campus security is on the way."  At first we didn't believe them.

But then they explained....

Tom was planning to dress as a gangster for Halloween.  Kenny had a gun...well, it wasn't a real gun, but it looked like a .45.  Tom thought it would be an excellent prop for his costume.  Kenny took the gun out of its case....just as a couple of girls came into the lobby.  

Two guys who are not even students at the school, in the lobby of a dorm at 3 AM, with what appears to be a real gun...

The Security Guard who showed up a few minutes later asked Ellen and me for our ID cards, and told Kenny  not to bring that gun onto campus again. He followed us to Tom's car and followed the car until we left the school grounds.

This sotry would have had a much different ending in 2020...