TP'ing, Crank Calling, and My Other Fine Moments

Reading through all the “25 Things About Me” posts on Facebook by friends, I found myself thinking of all the crazy things we did in Junior High and High School. Suddenly, a moral question comes up: Would I let my kid do those things (if I knew about it)? Hmm… Not trying to give anyone ideas, but let’s brush up on things I did as a kid:

• TP’ing Houses: Lots, and lots, and lots of TP’ing houses of friends/acquaintances. We’d go to the Grocery Outlet and get the biggest multi packs of toilet paper for the cheapest amount of money. It takes just a few minutes to create the master piece. The bigger the trees in the front yard, the more fun. I’m sure it could take much longer to clean up. To have your house TP’d usually meant you were fairly well liked; wasn’t an insult.
• Chinese Fire Drills: This has nothing to do with China. I don’t know where the name came from. Essentially, a car full of teenagers approaches a red light. Before the light turns green, they all (except the driver), must get out of the car, run around to the other side and get in again. Usually, this is done at night to avoid getting “in trouble”. As an adult I think to myself, “that could be possibly the dumbest, most insane and dangerous stunt – I mean, someone could get hit by a car coming up to the light." Unfortunately, it was fun.
• Crank Calling: This was really in the Pre-Junior High years. I had a friend who thrived on crank calling. She was old fashioned about it. Didn’t call people she knew – she went straight to the phone book and would tell people that their utilities payments were past due, using my home phone. Good thing they didn’t have caller ID back then. Was somewhat funny until our neighbor was one of her victims.
• All-Nighters (pre-college): I was not a fan of the all-nighter. I actually needed sleep. I had a friend (whom we shall call “Wild Woman”) who had a birthday party every year in which no one slept (usually). We lip sync’d to top 40 songs, ate lots of junk food, and pretty much did much of the stuff already on the list above. There’s video proof of all this somewhere out there.
• 11 People in a Volvo: It’s hard to forget the time we fit 11 people in an old Volvo. It was cramped. This was a girls night out in high school, but one of the cars broke down, so we all squished into a Volvo. Did I mention it seated 5 max?
• Is this illegal?: I think there were times we were in the middle of playing a game like a friends’ scavenger hunt in the middle of the night when we thought to ourselves something like, “Should we be trying to take this mudflap off this persons truck? I mean, isn’t that stealing or vandalizing?” In this example, good thing it was stuck on there.

We never drank. We never smoked. Never did drugs. I didn’t even swear. Never any violence. We never stole things (because the mudflap wouldn’t come off the truck and the phonebook was pretty well attached to the phonebooth). I don’t think we did really shameful things in the end. We were good kids and I can say confidently that our parents didn’t have a lot to really complain about.

I’ll have to remember to delete this posting when Toby begins to read.