True confession: I was a devious licker!

There's a trend sweeping the nation, or the high school division of it anyway, in which kids are stealing objects from their schools, or committing outright acts of vandalism, and - what else - posting vids of their actions on TikTok. #DeviousLicks

The ur video, from what I gather, was of some kid filching a box of face masks. (Or was it a hand sanitizer dispenser.)

Now, if this kid was "licking" - and I take it "lick" is current slang for ripping something or someone off - the only box of face masks that their school needed to prevent the spread of covid, and was destroying it, that's one thing. 

But what if they were just taking it temporarily to annoy the assistant principal or school nurse? And returned it to its rightful owner? Or left it out someplace where it could be found?

Sure it's annoying, but - from a high schooler's perspective - it's funny. BFD.

Anyway, the ur TikTok, posted just a few weeks ago, quickly went viral and got with millions of views. And once something is viral... All of a sudden, it's a challenge, and there are a rash of kids posting videos of their deviance. #DeviousLicks.

Some of the incidents were pretty minor. Plenty of them were fake: a kid stealing her own microscope; another one pretending to clip a school Chromebook, only to put it back immediately.

Inevitably, things escalated. Box of masks? Hand sanitizer? So yesterday. Inevitably, some kids spun out of control. Not just - ho-ho - removing all the TP from the boys room, but ripping out soap dispensers, urinals, sinks, stall doors. And causing tremendous amounts of damage.

A 14-year old girl in my home town of Worcester was arrested for (allegedly) vandalizing a bathroom in her school, and then assaulting two teachers once she was caught. Six kids in a school in Florida were arrested for causing $2K worth of damage. Schools pretty much everywhere are reporting that their kids have gotten in on the act.

Meanwhile, TikTok removed the hashtag.

Kids do stupid things. Remember the Tide Pod Challenge, in which teenagers swallowed poisonous Tide Pods? Some ended up in the ER and had to have their stomachs pumped out. A few reportedly died. 

And now, this. No one's dead. At least so far. But it's easy to imagine that if this keeps up, kids will try to outdo the latest. And someone'll pull a stunt that's truly dangerous. 

Still, damage costs running into the thousands? Hitting a teacher? NOT GOOD.

Hysteria is, of course, on the rise about this trend. Punishers, moralizers, end of the world-ers. Sure, it's terrible. And the kids who committed acts of vandalism need to be held accountable for the damage they've done: financial payback - and I'd make the kids pay, not their parents - community service, etc. (Not a criminal record, however, unless they're repeat performers.) But anyone who "stole" something - like Mr. Bingham's stapler or the clock from the music room - and returned it unharmed, I'd let completely off the hook.

Maybe I'm just a lax liberal, but I can't see ruining a kid's life because they got caught up in a stupid social media moment and went a little wild. 

And maybe it's because I did a couple of dopey things in my time.

I never vandalized anything. And I never permanently stole stuff from my school, either. But in college - not even high school; I was in college! - I did deviously lick off with things a couple of times. (My little devious licks were a break from my political involvement, which in college began with campaigning for Gene McCarthy and picketing stores that carried non-union grapes, and moved on up to anti-war protests and demonstrating for reforms at the way the college went about a lot of things. Anyway, I was always into a bit of guerrilla theater. I wore my sisters Girl Scout badge sash to a meeting with the school's Board of Trustees. Long crazy story.)

I went to a Catholic women's college, and the halls and classrooms were full of statues and crucifixes. We all considered it ultra-old school, and did plenty of eye-rolling. And one year, a friend and I decided to remove a good-sized statue of the BVM (that's Blesse Virgin Mary to you, you pagan) from the administration building and transport it to our dorm. We smuggled it out under my friends green maxi-raincoat, right past a security guard. "Art project," we told him. He just nodded.

We presented the statue to another friend, who kept it in her room for the year, surrounding it with peacock feathers, a glow-in-the-dark rosary draped over the statue's folded hands. 

At the end of the school year, when the dorms emptied out, the BVM was left behind. Presumably, someone brought it back where it belonged.

More seriously (I guess), the same friend and I removed the Valentine's Day decorations that had been put up in the dining hall.

My college had the absolute worst food you can imagine. No dorm was more than a two minute walk from the cafeteria, but they had to start posting the menus in the dorms because too many of the students would call ahead to see whether the two minute walk was worth it.

We named the meals: Charles River Scum (some sort of fetid fish dish). Abortion (can't remember if this was lasagna or eggplant parm). Puck (any one of of a number of hard desiccated brown meats). Just inedible.

All we wanted was a salad bar, and cold cereal on offer at all meals, but for some reason they dug their heals in.

Then all these Valentine's Day decorations showed up. Cutesy signs all over the place, and a giant crepe paper heart dangling from the ceiling, gracing the dining room.

That did it. No money for a salad bar? A tiny box of cornflakes? But money for nonsense decorations?

We'd had it.

For some reason, we found the door to the caf open - we never would have broken in - and decided to take those decorations into our own hands. I still remember standing on a table, in the dark, using a window pole to get that giant crepe heart down. 

The next day, there was a sign posted about the nasty girls who had "spoiled the fun for everyone", and claiming that Mrs. W., the nutritionist - some nutritionist: she hadn't been able to get us a salad bar! - had paid for the decorations out of her own pocket. By lunch, that part of the sign had been cut off. Of course, she hadn't paid out of her own pocket. That was our money. 

We didn't destroy the decorations. We left them out in a place where they could be found. (Good thing there were no security cameras back in the day, eh?) But I don't think they were ever put back up. 

Post hoc ergo propter hoc? Maybe. The school did put in a salad bar. 

(Times have changed. I'm on a committee at my college that runs a social justice lecture series and, pre-covid, we'd convene at the school a few times a year. Sometimes, we'd eat in the dining hall. And the food's pretty good. The salad bar, compared to what we were hungering for, is just dazzling.)

Anyway, as something of a devious licker myself, I can be a very understanding and forgiving of the TikTok kids who are stealing/not really stealing random objects. Been there, done that. However, I would kick the ass (metaphorically, anyway) of the vandals. But I still wouldn't end them up with a record. (Striking a teacher? That kid needs help. Apparently, she was overwrought at having been caught and lashed out at some teachers who were trying to calm her down.) 

And thus ends my true confession for the day.

As we used to say, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.