A group of us were novice UNIX hacks working for our department of
computer science, all on similar terminals.  I had written a small 
program that would transmit a single character at a time to another 
terminal (No big deal, but no one else had tried it).  One guy was 
typing away, and I was making his cursor "wiggle" by pressing the 
forward and reverse arrow keys.  He exclaimed that something was wrong 
with his cursor.  Another guy picked up on this, and explained that 
the cursor beam must be loose.  He gave the right side of the first 
guy's (John's) terminal a good hard whack, I transmitted a carriage 
return. John laughed that this worked, but actually continued typing, 
and whacking the side of the terminal every time he needed a carriage 
return - FOR SEVERAL MINUTES.  Needless to say, we were hysterical. 
The second guy, (Tim), said "John, watch this!" and put his hand under 
John's desk and gave the underside of the desk another whack: I 
transmitted a "HOME" character, moving the cursor to the top of the 
screen, again as if the whack had moved the cursor.  John continues 
typing,  whacking the bottom and side of the terminal whenever he 
needs cursor motion.  Tim smacks the top of the terminal and I 
transmit a CLEAR key: it looked as if the characters have been 
"knocked" off the screen.  John is just about the get the lab manager 
when we clue him in...                                      - Dusty F.