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U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen confessed to a fondness for water pranks during a recent commencement address at his alma mater, St. Olaf College. That puts a new light on the horizontal geyser that spurted from the wall of his Capitol Hill office soon after the freshman Republican arrived in Washington, D.C. Video after the jump. 

Here’s what happened when Paulsen was a freshman in college:

My freshman year, my friends and I explored the laws of physics with bottles of shampoo and several hundred gallons of water, we turned the south first floor of Hoyme [Hall] into a pretty amazing water slide. I think the rugs on that floor are probably still drying out. In Kildahl [Hall] my junior year, when I was an authority figure as a junior counselor, we decided we needed to expand our cultural horizons. Using plywood and duct tape, we managed to turn the boys’ shower room into a Turkish bath. We actually engineered it so we had three feet of water and that full steambath thing going. Now it was no Rube Goldberg champion, but I have to tell you that we were pretty proud of it. For a dry campus, we sure had a lot of fun with water. 

And here’s what happened when Paulsen was a freshman in Congress:

Finally, here’s the St. Olaf motto that Paulsen told his commencement audience he lives by:

Do, then think, then do some more. 

erikPostscript: Paulsen has already made several social visits to the White House — a stunning start for a Republican. He told the St. Olaf crowd that he had mentioned the upcoming commencement speech to President Obama, who gave several graduation talks of his own this spring, and got this advice: “Keep it short.”

Paulsen clocked in at about 14 minutes (video, Paulsen starts at 47:30).