It was a relatively mundane Tuesday afternoon in 2015, back when I was in High School and back when life was simple.
My High School
I was hanging out with some friends in the library, and I somehow ended up in the bathroom with my two best friends, Bobby and Shikhar (he has the same name as me). Don’t worry this story isn’t going where you think it is.
I don’t remember why exactly we were in the bathroom, but Shikhar suddenly happened to pull out a whiteboard marker, a presumably erasable one (or so we thought) from his pocket.
Since we were graduating in a few months, I thought that it would be a wonderful idea to leave our imprint somewhere on the school building.
On one of the toilet stalls. By writing “The Chamber of Secrets has been Opened” all over it.
Both Bobby and Shikhar found this idea most amusing, and buoyed by their enthusiastic response, I obliged and got to work.
I think it’s important to mention that the bathroom was exceptionally small – it could only fit a total of two toilet stalls, and that being the only bathroom in the library, it was also extremely high traffic.
Absolutely everyone would be seeing this message of ours.
For the next 15 – 30 seconds, we enjoyed our work of art. It was witty and the reference was easily understandable. However, given the size of the bathroom, and the fact that after 30 seconds the message ceased to even be remotely funny, it was decided that it needed to be erased.
It wouldn’t erase.
The supposed whiteboard marker was in fact a permanent marker, and no amount of mixture of soap & water was making it go away.
Now, I realize in retrospect that the magnitude of the situation wasn’t that bad, but in the heat of the moment, all 3 of us felt as if we were screwed.
Our college admissions were going to be rescinded, we were going to get suspended, and most importantly my dad would be furious.
“I have an idea!” shouted Shikhar Bahl. To be honest, he was always going to be our only hope because Bobby and I working together tend to do more bad than good.
His idea was to run to the chemistry lab one floor above and to find some type of acid / chemical that would allow us to erase the message. This would involve successfully convincing the individual who worked at the lab, Sam, to let us borrow the chemical, to sneaking said chemical into the library, and hoping that no teachers visited the bathroom whilst the rescue operation was taking place.
It was an ambitious plan, but it was our only hope.
We quickly pulled out our phones, googled something along the lines of “chemical that erases anything”, and after a few seconds, we found our saviour:
Acetone is a colorless, volatile, flammable liquid that can erase anything. Hell yeah.
Shikhar and I guarded the bathroom whilst Bobby, who knew Sam the best, ran upstairs to find this chemical.
Chances of this working were like 2-3 / 10 because the lab was actually fairly small so finding the chemical would be hard, and on top of that given the high amount of traffic outside the bathroom, a teacher walking in before Bobby came back was very likely.
But Bobby came back soon enough. And it worked like a charm.
Took a total of 5min to properly erase the whole message, and soon after we were able to exit the bathroom.
Fun Fact: I get to go to college with both of these guys. Watch out California.