The house across the street got TPed last night. I imagine it was for the 10-11 yr old girl who is in cheerleading. What are your thoughts about TPing?
I never did it myself, and none of my kids were ever on teams or in activities where it was done. My wife says when she was in HS the pom pom squad would TP football players’ houses. Each girl would steal a couple of rolls from their homes. They were in HS so they drove themselves.
If your house got TPed, who cleaned it up? The kid or the parents? If you did the TPing, were your parents involved? Did you buy the TP or take it from your home? (I think I posted here before that my when my nieces got TPed, my BIL “saved” some of the TP for the family to use for its “intended” purpose.)
Not being part of any “culture” that TPed, it always just struck me as a waste.
I’ve gone along with friends to TP a house and trees when I was between 10 and 15. Also soaped windows. Wasn’t an organized activity, more spur of the moment thing that would happen when we were bored. The targets would be either some kid that wasn’t with or had pissed off the crowd or was considered stuck up. Cheerleaders were often considered the ladder. Adults and teachers could also be a target if the kids didn’t like them.
I knew kids who did this regularly in junior high school because what the fuck else is there to do in a Midwestern farm town other than smoke weed and commit minor and major acts of vandalism. I knew a couple of future MacArthur fellows who tried cow tipping, discover that cows are actually really difficult and actively resistant to push off their feet, and decided to use their truck to push it over instead. One injured cow, a totaled truck, and two unseatbelted occupants who smushed their faces against the windshield later, it made for some good public outrage until the next week when the pastor’s wife ran off with a seventeen year old high school dropout.
My parents’ house got TPed. I think it was soon after I was outed for getting my period at age 11. There wasn’t much TP (maybe 2 rolls) and it rained, so there wasn’t much to clean up.
I would never TP a house. Our current place got egged last Halloween - not fun to clean up.
Seems some other folk were able to figure out that I was not asking about whether people had Transportable Pressure Equipment Directived a house.
Spoke with my BIL (Brother In Law - not Bloomberg T-Bill ETF ;)) on the way to golf this morning. He clarified that what he had “saved” were full or nearly full rolls that had gotten stuck in their trees.
He also said he kept it up for a couple of days because he considered it a nice sign of “respect” from their kids’ peers. Funny how different folk perceive the same act differently. I guess it is a sign that one is a part of the gang, but I don’t think I would have come up with the word respect to describe it.
Same here. My mother’s mother was a fun-loving and jovial woman who loved a good prank*. Every time my auntie (her daughter, my mom’s sister) would come to town with her family (to include my cousin who was the same age as me), we’d TP either Grandma’s house or my house – never a stranger’s. My stepdad would pretend to be all mad about it, we’d all have a good laugh. It’s a tradition my cousin has continued with her kids and grandkids – every Halloween she and my auntie can both expect their houses to be TP’d.
I don’t remember the cleanup. Best I can figure we just ignored it and let the wind and rain do its thing. It would be snowing within a couple of weeks anyway.
*Grandma and her sister were the daughters of a lay Methodist minister and the principal of their small-town school district. A Pillar of the Community, a Big Fish in a Small Pond, if you will. So of course Grandma and Aunt Jean were the most mischevious, trouble-makingest girls in town. Their father rolled his eyes and made exasperated sighs at their shenanigans, but secretly he got a kick out of them.
A few years ago, my parents found some toilet paper thrown over one of the trees out front. This was way too high to reach with any ladder in the house, so fortunately, eventually, rain took care of it.
When i was a kid, teenagers threw rolls of toilet paper over tree limbs on “cabbage night”, the night before Halloween. I don’t think i was ever involved, but i wouldn’t swear to it.
It looked kind of festive the next day.
None of the kids cleaned up, as far as i can recall. But clean up wasn’t a big deal. Tug the stuff in reach, and let the rain bring down anything else. Then mow any residue, or rake it up with the leaves.
I heard stories of places where real damage was done on the night before Halloween, but the worst that ever happened near me was a smashed pumpkin it two, and that wasn’t common.
Idid with a bunch of friends in high school. I don’t remember why we did it. It was mostly trees in front of the house. We’re lucky we didn’t get caught what with all the giggling and screaming. We did a lot of goofy slightly dangerous stuff (to us) when we were in high schools. Remembering some of our hijinks makes me smile even today.
I’ve done it. Always to people I knew. Most notably to a good buddy from University, who was the first to get a high paid professional job in high tech in the 1980s, and bought a house when he was about 23. A carful of us first went to a couple of fast food places for “supplies”, pulled up, and in less than 2 minutes absolutely covered his big ass trees in the front yard with prolly a dozen rolls of TP. Not just one throw per roll either. He wasn’t home.
The next day his answering machine (remember those?) had a very snarky “thank you to those that TP’d my house.” He cleaned up at least some of the mess. So, our same group went back that night when he was home, and did a repeat.
Not sure if anyone helped clean up? I was visiting from China at the time, so fled the country a day or two later.
We did it all the time when I was in HS. It was a weekly thing for a while.
Most involved was 47 rolls of toilet paper – we topped it off by leaning a flocked xmas tree we got off the curb against the front door and ringing the bell so it fell in on them when they opened the door.
My college has a pilot flight training program and one year a couple of students in a small plane buzzed the football field during a game and tossed a roll or two out the window.
I think it’s relatively harmless - but I’ve never been on the receiving end, and have no idea how hard it is to clean up. There is a house down the block that had a cute high school girl living there, and they got TPed weekly - and the trees in the yard were big giant maples. It was really impressive sometimes - the boys who did it must have had really hard crushes on her.
There’s also a local high school where I believe the seniors TP the trees lining its entrance - there’s at least 40 old-growth trees there, and it’s pretty surreal how completely they get the job done.
It used to be a thing on Mischief Night. In my town that seemed to die off around the time I grew up. As an adult working Mischief Night it really has become just another night.
