"We're Just Playing."

I can hear my mother saying it now, and I have often repeated it myself whenever shenanigans were going on:  "Stop that.  Somebody's going to get hurt."  Nawww...we're just playing.  Slam, bam, crash...Waaaaahhhhh!  Were Mom and I psychic?  No.  It's just something that comes with experience, knowing that what starts out innocently enough usually ends up in tears and bandaids.

My daughter and her best friend, Tiffany, would get to horsing around.  One such event cost me a trip to the ER with my accident-prone daughter; another cost me $50 for a new bicycle tire.  "We're just playing!"

My daughter and her father were throwing a ball at each other in the family room.  I told them to stop before something or someone got broken.  "We're just playing."  The very next throw, Daddy's glass of beer got hit with the ball and went flying, requiring major clean-up.  Told ya!

My grandchildren would start out with a tickle-fest...but then someone would get hit in the mouth, and it hurt, which made one of them mad, and the fight was on for real.  My admonitions when it was still tickling would fall on deaf ears.  "We're just playing."  My response always was, "Somebody's going to get hurt."  Invariably, someone or something would.

Same thing at school.  What the students would describe as "play fighting" would escalate into the real thing in short order.  "Senior pranks" were often cute and creative--like the student's locker that was filled with thousands of marbles that scattered all over the hallway and down the stairs when the kid opened his locker in the morning.  Then there was the time that one of Monrovia's honor students took part in a "prank" where the office door locks were super-glued shut and very liquid pig manure was smeared all over an entire bank of lockers, requiring a delay to the start of the school day while custodians and teachers alike (I was one of them) were all cleaning up lockers with bleach.  Yeah...it was just a prank.  "We were just playing."

Our school also had a Powder Puff Football contest during Homecoming Week each year, until one occasion when the girls that took part decided to get cute with the staff sponsors and started dumping things all over them.  It got nasty and disrespectful.  Thereafter, the Powder Puff games were canceled for years.  (Not sure if they were ever reinstated.)  Same thing with what started as an impromptu water balloon fight in the band practice field beyond the parking lot at the end of the very last day of school.  It was great fun, but every year, kids got a little more serious about what they were putting in their balloons.  It got to the point that the administration started video taping it from the roof of the school, along with staff stationed all around, watching to make sure that cars weren't damaged and people weren't hurt. But, inevitably, some were...and that was the end of the water balloon fight, forever.

So now, here we are again.  What started out as a good idea has been bastardized by a few to spoil the spirit of things.  Perhaps you've heard of the Ice Bucket Challenge, which started out as a fundraising idea for Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's Disease).  The crux of the challenge was that people who were nominated (or "challenged") by their friends had 24 hours to have a bucket of ice water dumped over them and donate $10 to ALS, or, if they didn't take the challenge, they were supposed to donate $100. Suddenly, Facebook and the Internet were awash with videos of people getting doused with water. (Not sure how many actually donated, but it looked good anyway.)  At its height, the IBC raised $100 million for ALS.  BUT--did you predict this?--some students in Ohio thought they would improve on what started out as a creative way to raise money.  They picked a classmate with autism and got him to agree to take the challenge, except the so-called water they dumped on him contained feces, urine, and spit.  The kids now face legal charges, and the whole Ice Bucket Challenge has been tainted by the stupidity of a few who were "only playing".

I'm still shaking my head over this one...