One year, in middle school, my friends and I realized that we were too old to “trick-or-treat” anymore. We spoke at length about what this meant to us, and discussed alternative methods of celebrating the holiday. First we decided to go to a party. It was a great plan – one that we all heartily endorsed and eagerly anticipated.
The only problem is that there were no parties.
Someone suggested, probably bitterly, that we go bag-snatching. (Bag-snatching is a brutal exercise in natural selection in which bigger kids go trolling for smaller kids with large candy bags. In true scavenger fashion, the big kids then relieve the small kids of their candy and ride away on faster bicycles.) When we resisted, he argued that candy is bad for children, and that we would be doing them and their parents a big favor. Even so, we decided that bag-snatching was still too assholian for us, so we put the kibosh on the whole idea. I think that guy ended up going bag-snatching anyway. Joey was that kind of jerk.
The winning idea for that Halloween ended up requiring a rather large investment in toilet paper. We decided to spend that Halloween on the edge. We were going TP-ing. TP-ing is the practice of covering one’s property with toilet paper. This is a service provided free of charge to the property owner. The unrequested nature of the act makes TP-ing as much a sport as it is an art. Speed and stealth are slightly more critical than aesthetics. We heard some kid got shot by a homeowner one year.
So we loaded up the TP and hit the road in our beach cruisers, mountain bikes, and GTs. After three or four easy wrap jobs, we got ambitious. We needed a major target. We were mere blocks from the Vice Principal’s house, whose daughter was in our same grade and was a die-hard New Kids on the Block fan. We had motive, means, and opportunity. It was on.
Once we reached the right street, a difference of opinion broke out as to the actual location of the house. There were two opinions as to which house it was. We flipped a coin, but in the end we decided this was too important to leave to chance. Our only option – we split into two teams and completely TP’ed both houses with equal vigor and panache. And just to ensure that the deed had been done, we TP’ed three or four other houses likely to be that of the VP. We went home satisfied.
The next day, a few of us approached the VP’s daughter and casually mentioned that we had heard that her house had been TP’ed last night. She denied it. She denied that her house had been TP’ed!!
To this day, I have no idea if I ever TP’ed the Vice Principal’s house.
Bye for now.