<p>My son’s been at my ex’s the last couple of days, so I didn’t have a chance to talk to him about this until I picked him up at the high school tonight after a dance he went to.</p>
<p>I’m really not mad at him anymore. Although I doubt I’ll ever see it as funny!</p>
<p>I guessed right. He and his two friends thought of doing this because they were painting the mural most of the day yesterday, and decided, as it were, to expand the scope of their canvas.</p>
<p>He painted about four quotations on the bathroom wall, in block letters. Mostly above the urinals, so people “would have something to read.” He decided that he should have quotes about men, because that would be appropriate. Only one could properly be called literary, something from Nabokov. (Or maybe it was Conrad, I forget which he did and which his friends did in the girls’ room – he’s asleep already so I can’t ask him.) Of the rest, one was a quotation from a writer named Francesca Cancian: “Part of the reason that men seem so much less loving than women is that their behavior is measured with a feminine ruler.” And the other two were silly jokes, one from Jerry Seinfeld (“Men look for pretty much the same thing from underwear that they do from women – a little bit of support, a little bit of freedom”), and one from Robin Williams (“God gave men both a brain and a *****, but only enough blood to use one at a time”).</p>
<p>He said he was careful not to paint on the part of the wall that’s brick, because he thought that would be harder to clean off.</p>
<p>Also, it isn’t as if there isn’t already graffiti on the walls in there – some of it obscene. He made sure to point out to the “authorities” that that wasn’t his work.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the two girls apparently went wild in the girls’ room; it sounds like they wrote all over the place – walls, inside the stalls, even on the mirrors. Shakespeare, an entire poem by Robert Frost, at least a half dozen others.</p>
<p>They haven’t been caught. Yet. Probably, my son thinks, because the vice-principal, a man, can’t go in the girls’ room. But he did see what was in the boys’ room, and approached my son in the corridor today. My son isn’t sure, but thinks the guy just figured my son was the only boy in the school who would do something like this. He didn’t really seem particularly angry, and said, “uh, J----, what about the writing on the bathroom wall?” To which my son responded, “I thought it was really witty, didn’t you?” And the v-p said, “uh, yes, but we have to talk. I don’t want to ruin the end of your senior year, but . . .” And that’s basically what happened. J. says they were careful not to schedule the in-school suspension on Wednesday, the day of the awards ceremony, so he won’t have to miss it.</p>
<p>So, yeah. He did apologize, by the way, even though he still doesn’t think what he did was so bad. And I’m still not happy about it, and I still think it was a dumb thing to do, but as school pranks go, he’s right; it really could have been a lot worse. He told me that last year, some kids somehow burned a drawing of a ***** into the grass, with the principal’s name next to it. They had to miss graduation. Rightfully, I think.</p>
<p>I’m actually a little miffed that the two girls (both of whom I know, and both of whom are really wonderful kids too) appear to be getting away with it, even though they did a lot more than J. (Paint on the mirrors? A bit excessive, I think.) Not that I’d ever dream of turning them in, but it seems to me that if they were really mensches, they’d fess up. </p>
<p>I probably overreacted a little at first, but when I heard the word “suspended” over the phone, I was not a happy camper. </p>
<p>It won’t be so bad, really. He’ll have to sit in a room all day, although he gets a lunch break. No computer, no portable music allowed. He can work, or read a book, or think. Or all three. I could use a day like that, to be honest.</p>
<p>Donna</p>
<p>PS: Apparently, I’m not allowed to type the word for a notable part of the male body. Hence, the asterisks.</p>