419?

When I was in the dorms at Cal Poly, an aggie and an engineering school, I had friends in all sorts of engineering programs, and there were entertaining classes that were most likely based in Material Engineering discipline, like metal works, plastic works, and engravings of all sorts.

Tony came back to the dorms once with a plastic high-relief spooky looking clown sculpture. Another friend of ours, a fella named Gabe (he might have been Filipino), after taking a plastic engraving course, had twenty identical keychains to hand out to us. These were about three inches long, black plastic with white words. Gabe's teacher was plugged in a little closer to the head culture, and there were plenty of phrases and words that weren't allowed...you might be able to guess at some of them.

So Gabe returned to the steps that day with keychains that read "419?", like the question mark was him trying to see if the teacher knew about the 420 lingo/code meaning. Oh, how we loved the 419? symbology. It was an inside joke for about fifty wasters in the dorms.

I think guys once even took sheets to the P and changed it to say "419?" on April 19th, after years of having efforts to change it to "420" had been repeatedly thwarted.