"Ричард Фейнман. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!/Вы, конечно, шутите, мистер Фейнман! (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

come up with a terrific idea! We walked straight into town without making an
error.
On the following day there was going to be a schoolwide freshman versus
sophomore mudeo (various forms of wrestling and tug of wars that take place
in the mud). Late in the evening, into our fraternity comes a whole bunch of
sophomores - some from our fraternity and some from outside - and they
kidnap us: they want us to be tired the next day so they can win.
The sophomores tied up all the freshmen relatively easily - except me.
I didn't want the guys in the fraternity to find out that I was a "sissy."
(I was never any good in sports. I was always terrified if a tennis ball
would come over the fence and land near me, because I never could get it
over the fence - it usually went about a radian off of where it was
supposed to go.) I figured this was a new situation, a new world, and I
could make a new reputation. So in order that I wouldn't look like I didn't
know how to fight, I fought like a son of a gun as best I could (not knowing
what I was doing), and it took three or four guys many tries before they
were finally able to tie me up. The sophomores took us to a house, far away
in the woods, and tied us all down to a wooden floor with big U tacks.
I tried all sorts of ways to escape, but there were sophomores guarding
us, and none of my tricks worked. I remember distinctly one young man they
were afraid to tie down because he was so terrified: his face was pale
yellow-green and he was shaking. I found out later he was from Europe -
this was in the early thirties - and he didn't realize that these guys all
tied down to the floor was some kind of a joke; he knew what kinds of things
were going on in Europe. The guy was frightening to look at, he was so
scared.
By the time the night was over, there were only three sophomores
guarding twenty of us freshmen, but we didn't know that. The sophomores had
driven their cars in and out a few times to make it sound as if there was a
lot of activity, and we didn't notice it was always the same cars and the
same people. So we didn't win that one.
My father and mother happened to come up that morning to see how their
son was doing in Boston, and the fraternity kept putting them off until we
came back from being kidnapped. I was so bedraggled and dirty from
struggling so hard to escape and from lack of sleep that they were really
horrified to discover what their son looked like at MIT!
I had also gotten a stiff neck, and I remember standing in line for
inspection that afternoon at ROTC, not being able to look straight forward.
The commander grabbed my head and turned it, shouting, "Straighten up!"
I winced, as my shoulders went at an angle: "I can't help it, sir!"
"Oh, excuse me!" he said, apologetically.
Anyway, the fact that I fought so long and hard not to be tied up gave
me a terrific reputation, and I never had to worry about that sissy business
again - a tremendous relief.

I often listened to my roommates - they were both seniors - studying
for their theoretical physics course. One day they were working pretty hard
on something that seemed pretty clear to me, so I said, "Why don't you use
the Baronallai's equation?"
"What's that!" they exclaimed. "What are you talking about!"