Get out the Ladder

In 1983 as I pulled into my driveway I saw a couple of kids scrambling and ducking behind my mother's parked car. As I looked up into the trees my house was in the process of being toilet papered (TP'd or wrapped). This was my first experience with such an act. My first thought was "our house is being vandalized". Then from behind the car I saw my best friend's blonde hair. She stood up and scurried toward me. The gig was up she had been caught! She threw me a roll of toilet paper and said "we are doing Nickie's house next."

I soon learned that this was not "vandalism" but a "rite of passage." It is 24 years later and this "rite of passage" is still practiced, mostly by kids over the age of 11, but every now and then, when you least expect it, a co-worker, friend or relative leaves a pair of hot pink flamingo's in your front yard with a note that reads "you've been flamingoed, pass it on." No harm is intended and the target is generally a close friend so the culprit is very easy to find.

This "rite of passage" has evolved to include much more than a roll of toilet paper. We were "skewered" on the last day of school. I woke up the next morning to find trees of tissue and and a yard inundated with wooden skewers.
As I got on the phone, to wake up the culprits who were no doubt still asleep from their late night antic's, a teenager from my block stopped by to tell me about "skewering, forking and Jolly Ranching."

The skewers were easy to clean up, but when the toilet paper hits the trees it reproduces! I guess that is why the people that are toilet papered every weekend eventually quit cleaning it up!

I am personally investing in Cottonelle & Charmin. If my trees are going to be "wrapped" I am at least going to make a profit!

(If you are a kid: Don't do this it is wrong, wrong, wrong!)