Night Moves

Here’s another in the Sunday Story series.  This one is a real “high school” mix – of social media, old stories, and sex.  

Here’s the link to the Bob Seger and the Sliver Bullet song – Night Moves

Tik-Tok

A few weeks ago I read a long community Facebook “conversation” from the “Pataskala” group. There was a “Tik-Tok” video from the local high school restroom. No one put the actual video on Facebook, but it showed two feet under a restroom stall. The people connected to the feet were supposedly having sex. It raised “a ruckus” in this small town – those feet might actually symbolize (or simulate) having sex in school!

Whether the rest of the attached bodies were also having sex, or it was all just a staged “Tik-Tok” viral moment, only two know for sure. But folks here in town sure were hot. How could this happen, where were the teachers (not in the restroom for sure – that would create a whole different issue), and what can be done? Are feet “having sex” really kiddie porn?

I had the high honor and privilege to teach high school and middle school in this small town for thirty-six years, forty if you include the years I coached after I retired from teaching. I thank the “great teacher” in the sky, that there weren’t hand held video recording devices for most of those forty years, particularly ones that could broadcast to all of the other students and parents in the community and the world. Kids are kids, and for them, risks and rewards are often slanted. The risk of “getting caught” is almost never as compelling as the reward of notoriety or gratification.

Sex

Many kids (not yours, of course), particularly middle and high school kids, are all about sex.  As an eighth grade teacher, I was told that my male students thought about sex every eleven seconds.  I don’t think that’s accurate, more likely it was every five seconds.  No matter how hard (there’s one) a teacher tried to neutralize (there’s two) a lecture, somehow it all came (there’s three) back to sex.  Whether it was about astronomy (Uranus), or history (World War I:  Fokker aircraft and Marshal Foch), there was always a red face or a hushed giggle.

And some kids went beyond joking and discussing.  They tried it – in the restroom, training room, storage room, ice room, wrestling room, auditorium, prop room, the back of the bus, the school van, the teacher workroom and on the tables in the cafeteria.  We found them on the high jump and pole vault pits (both out and while in storage), the wrestling mats, on the tile floor, and even on top of a log and flat on a dirt path in the back of the school woods (poison ivy the least of their worries).  Did I forget the baseball dugouts?

And that’s not including the few who decided to “do it” all by themselves in the back of a classroom, or the more modest couples who snuck out to their cars or vans or empty homes in between classes, or during lunch, or the day when the substitute failed to take attendance.

It all happened, over the forty years I was there.  The difference between then and now is that no one was putting it out on social media for everyone else to see.  So to all those folks who were so, so upset on Facebook the other day:  there’s nothing new here.  

And Punishment

Sure, we punished kids for “doing it” in school. Back in my day it was a five day out-of-school suspension. The worst part, both for the Administrator and the students, was calling “Mom” to tell her what happened. No matter how open the act, it was hard not to feel sorry for the kid as they tried to explain to Mom over the phone, or worse, in person, exactly what they did.

We didn’t publicize the kids we caught “in flagrante delicto”. We handled their misdeeds with discretion. It wasn’t a public thing, unless the kids were so public that the whole student body already knew. Even if they didn’t realize it, we adults knew that they didn’t want to be “that couple” that everyone remembered at the ten-year reunion. And, since back then there wasn’t an IPhone hooked straight to social media, most other kids went through school oblivious to those inappropriate inter-actions.

Making Moves

So it wasn’t a surprise to me that many of my former students were on Facebook, bashing THIS generation for their sexual desires and video notoriety.  Most of them didn’t get crazy enough back in “their day” to do that.  But someone else in their era almost always did, and we caught some of them.  In fact, I remembered  a couple of the names on Facebook from twenty years before.  I guess they just forgot – hah.

Kids have been trying out their “Night Moves” for as long as there were moves to be made.  Of course school is not the appropriate place, and of course the teachers and administrators need to do the best they can to supervise the children.  But there’s nothing new here – other than social media making it a spectacle.  And that’s not the fault of the “doers”, but of the “watchers”.  

Oh  – what else are these kids learning?

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21