One of the worst things that ever happened at my high school involved a rule which said students weren't permitted to leave the grounds during lunch. The major scandal one year was when a school "bad-boy" drove his convertible past the front of the building at lunchtime with the top down, his friends yelling and waving while he honked the horn. Teachers were in an uproar, the principal huffed and puffed up and down the halls all day, but the students got a big kick out of it -- we just laughed.
We've come a long way since then. The dangerous and foolish things that pass for pranks, and that young people think are funny, often make me pause and shake my head. Television programs such as Jackass, Dirty Sanchez and Happy Tree Friends have popularized these scenarios and their imagery. Happy-Slapping, or attacking some unsuspecting stranger or acquaintance while recording the still or video images on cell phones is the latest gift to us from those too young and stupid to know any better.
Sometimes staged with friends, but more frequently a tactic akin to a sucker-punch delivered to a stranger, happy-slapping takes many forms, from setting someone on fire, to tossing water on an elderly person on a bicycle from a passing car. Along with injury, rape and even death have occurred... for the fun of it. In some instances, the act has been turned back on the perpetrator.
There was a time when someone would have their house T.P.ed, (toilet papered) usually around Halloween time, or friends would pat you on the back, leaving a "Kick Me" sticky note. One wonders what's left for subsequent foolish generations to do next... tossing babies from roof tops, high-speed head-on collisions with strangers on the highway, or perhaps the ever-laughable neighborhood thermo-nuclear explosion captured by camera phone?
No comments:
Post a Comment