Know what that picture is above?  If you do, I’m FAIRLY certain you were a teenage boy sometime in the late 90s early 2000s… I’m fairly certain you had bruise marks all over your arms… and I’m fairly certain that at some point when you were in my classroom, I wanted to be the one to add to your bruises.

You know why the cliche “It’s always something” exists? … For the same reason ALL cliches exist: because they are “flipping” true.

Oh yeah, I just said “flipping…”  I just went there.  Know why?  Cause of this…Four months ago a teen flipped a water bottle at a school talent show.  More than 5 million views later… and one uppance after another… and millions and millions and millions of other views, my life has changed. Not a single teenage boy in my life goes without a water bottle– never do they actually drink from these water bottles… they just flip them… over.. .and over… and over again… trying to add degrees of difficulty to this flip.  This is annoying parents and teachers all over to the country to the point that some schools are even having to ban bottles to stop the madness…

…and I thought the problem this year would be Pokemon.

Truly, it’s harmless and silly…  distracting, yes… but is it really THAT different from anything bored teenagers have ever done to pass the time?  Probably not…  So… it got me thinking.. What are the ridiculous trends we have seen over the years and tried to fight as the silly, ineffective adults we are?

I know we can go back as far as flagpole sitting and phone booth stuffing…

But what else is there?

There is the ever popular triangle, paper, football game…

The always exciting “cup check” … because what high school teacher DOESN’T love to have to tell 18-year-old boys “Quit punching each other in the crotch!”?

when they’d bring sleeves of saltines to my classroom and try to eat seven of them in 60 seconds

when they would stab themselves in the hand with their pencils while trying to race eachother’s times by showing who could go back and forth between their fingers fastest and for the longest

erasing each other’s skin to the point where they got staph infections… that one was fun…

There was something with quarters… not drinking… but something else.  I can’t remember what it was.  Was it just spinning them?  Maybe… I’m not sure.

Walking into my classroom to a room full of people planking across my desks…

And parkour… because you can’t touch the floor when you’re trying to submit something to the “turn in” basket…

What’s funny is that many of these things went “viral” long before YouTube.  I wonder how it happened?  I wonder how the signal goes out to the masses all across America that the time has come that all must now begin to buy safety pins, put beads on them, and attach them to their Keds (You didn’t think I was leaving you out of this, did you , girls?  You girls with your friendship bracelets, and your fancy note folding, and your Tamagotchi that you had to feed in class so it wouldn’t die..)

So after 23 years in the classroom, I’m just waiting to see what the next ridiculous, distracting (and relatively harmless and teenagery ) trend there will be…  I’m sure it will be no time at all before my next “If you _______________ one more time, so help me I will…”  will come out of my mouth.

Truth is I wouldn’t have it any other way.