Tping Business -- Is It Teenage Affection Or Just A Big Mess?

THE OTHER DAY someone TPed our house. This led to a big discussion at the Johnston household about the meaning of this event.

Some readers may be wondering what being "TPed" means. Being TPed means someone takes a roll of toilet paper (the TP) and covers your trees, lawn and car. It makes the front of your house look like you're getting dressed up for Halloween.

When you see a house that has been TPed, you figure there are teenagers living in the TPed house or the homeowner has gone insane.

My theory about this TPing business is that it's a sign that someone likes you. If they didn't like you, and wanted to do something to show their dislike, they would burn your house down.

When I told the Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston my theory about this toilet papering business being some way for a young lady to tell one of our sons that she liked him, Mrs. Johnston curled up her lower lip to show that she thinks she is married to an idiot and said it seemed to be an odd way to pass a message to a boy that a girl liked him.

Especially, Mrs. Johnston said, if that certain young lady ever hoped to meet the young man's parents. Well, at least the mother of the boy.

I said I remembered when I was growing up in Everett that it was a common practice to be driving through the neighborhood on a Saturday morning and come across a house covered with toilet paper.

Of course I should know better than ever starting a sentence with Mrs. Johnston with the words: "I remember growing up in Everett . . . "Mrs. Johnston has heard enough stories about growing up in Everett from her husband and all of his brothers to know that the things we did while "growing up in Everett" wouldn't be considered normal in most neighborhoods.

While I never asked Mrs. Johnston directly about her way of expressing affection for a boy when she was younger, I suspect that she didn't express it by doing anything with toilet paper.

To be honest, I can't remember ever having our family home in Everett covered with toilet paper, but most people who knew the Johnston boys (there were five of us) knew we believed in the Golden Rule of Payback.

If you covered our house with toilet paper, we covered your house with something far worse. The same rule applied to beating up a Johnston brother. It was OK for a Johnston brother to beat up another Johnston brother (sometimes it was encouraged by other Johnston brothers) but it wasn't OK for someone outside of the family to beat up a Johnston.

Nor was it OK to spread toilet paper on our house. We may have been amused by it but we wouldn't have been amused when our mother made us clean up the mess.

I know we would have complained that we didn't make the mess and we shouldn't be responsible for cleaning it up, but that argument never held up with my mother.

No, the Johnston brothers would have cleaned it up and then went hunting for the person who did it to give them a taste of the Golden Rule of Payback.

It wasn't hard to figure out who was the target of the TPing at our house. The subject of the toilet paper was our 16-year-old son. We knew this because his name was written on the driveway. It was written in toilet paper.

He cleaned it up but he said he didn't think it was a sign of affection. His mother agreed. His father's opinion doesn't count.

Steve Johnston is a reporter for The Seattle Times. Paul Schmid is a Times news artist.