Toilet Papering

When I was in high school it seemed like everyone was toilet papering everyone else’s home.  It went on all the time.  Also, unlike Covid, toilet paper was not in short supply.  It also seemed like everyone was trying to create the absolute best job of TPing.  It was a competition.  If someone used 20 rolls then you needed to use more.  Most of these events happened on the weekend.  Usually Friday or Saturday night so that the affected family could clean up on Sunday.  The awesomeness of the particular job was discussed in great detail on Monday at school.  Also it was important to remain anonymous.  You didn’t want them to know for sure who actually did the TPing. You could say that you saw the job because you drove by after it happened.  You had nothing to do with the job.  Anonymity preserved.    

It seemed innocent enough.  It was a prank, nothing more.  It wasn’t mean spirited and frankly it was all in fun.  In fact, if you didn’t get TPed you probably were a loser anyway.  All the cool kids were the ones being recipients of this prank.  Now I want to go to the TP job in question.  Our group of five guys committed many of the best TP jobs ever.  Having said that we decided one Friday night to TP a friend of ours.  His name was Brad. Technically he was not a friend. He was actually a jerk, so maybe this one was a bit mean spirited, but again these things happened all the time and were “for fun”.  So we case the house and go get some TP.  We return to the house and begin another one of our signature jobs.  The front porch light comes on and Brad’s dad comes out with a shotgun.  Are you kidding me!!  We scattered like our lives depended on it, and I am thinking that maybe they did.  In addition to wielding a shotgun he called the police.  OMG!! What did we do to deserve this kind of response.  We ran in 5 different directions.  I don’t think any shots were fired, but we were all on high alert for that and also kept ourselves hidden from any police prowlers who might have been responding to Brad’s father’s 911 call.  When we finally got back together later that night we decided that maybe we should cool it on the TPing.  Maybe Brad’s dad’s actions were a wake up call for all of us.  I still doubt that he would have shot any of us, but by brandishing that firearm we were put on notice that bad things could come from these pranks.  The good news is that we had made a pretty big statement with TP at Brad’s house.  The stuff was hanging from all of their trees and it made for a pretty big project to clean up on Sunday.  The other additional factor was that a brief rainstorm hit on Saturday just long enough to turn all the TP to mush.  That made clean up even more difficult.  I guess you could say that every cloud has a silver lining.  Brad never knew for sure who did the job.  Thank god, his dad would have probably pressed charges and we would have been booked and put in jail for some period of time.  I suspect that TPing is probably a misdemeanor.  I think that kids still TP houses.  Again, probably only the cool kids.  The pure volume of TP has probably gone down because of TP shortages, but you can still make quite a mess with this stuff.   

I guess kids are going to have to be more creative these days to create pranks that are not so “last year”.  What would those look like.  Fast food wrappers, Amazon boxes, discarded phones or masks, those foam peanuts,  strewn on someone’s lawn.  These things are plentiful for sure and probably cheaper than TP.  I hope that none of you find yourselves looking down the barrel of a gun because you were just having fun pranking a classmate.  Maybe you should think about how you would look with a front and side view holding a sign with a number on it and standing in front of a height scale.  Never mind, I am just pulling your chain.  Prank away… I think pranking is still alive and well.  Now I believe all participants must be more creative than in my day.