The line between a prank and danger has never been particularly clear, usually depending on the delicacy of one’s sensibilities and the projection of long-repressed memories of childhood slights.  But there are some things that are simply classics, one of which is putting a “kick me, please” sign on another kid’s back.

In the age of zero tolerance, however, even the classics must fall.  From the New York Post:

The fourth-grader was spotted sticking a yellow Post-it inviting “Kick me, please” on another little boy’s backside on Jan. 25.

But instead of getting banished to the corner for a timeout, the PS 158 prankster was bounced from the classroom for two days, The Post has learned.

The boy’s mom fumed that the old-school gag was just “playing around” — but a parent who asked to remain anonymous called the Post-it “maliciousness — it’s not kid’s play.”

And so, the heavy hand of protecting our youth from bullying fell.

The little boy’s behavior triggered a stern warning to the boy’s parents by school Principal Darryl Alhadeff.

“This incident is in violation of the Discipline Code and is classified as ‘infraction A37’ — engaging in bullying behavior — and will result in a Principal’s Suspension for a period of two days,” he wrote.

The  struggle to define “bullying,” a question I raised that has yet to be answered, hasn’t stopped angry parents and grocery clerks from exacting their punishment.  This idea that we can so utterly sanitize the environment in which our children are raised so as to eliminate anything that might potentially hurt someone’s feelings, is insane.  Our children need to learn to cope in a world populated by real people.  They need to be able to distinguish a prank from an attack.  They need to be able to take a punch once in a while and punch back.

What the heck are we doing to children, but the ones who engage in something so obviously intended as nothing more than a joke, as well as the ones who are being taught that mindless rules are the solution to anything that diminishes their self-esteem? 

While the examples of zero-tolerance madness are legion, this particular instance stands apart for its homage to probably the most classic schoolhouse prank ever.  Your grandparents did it. Your parents did it. You probably did it too.  And now, should your kids do it, they get suspended?  At least the 9 year old wasn’t led off in handcuffs, though I suspect that’s fortuitous and we’ll see that someday soon as well.

We’re in a marketing phase where products claiming to eliminate 99.9% of germs are all the rage.  What parent doesn’t want to protect her child from germs, right?  Except children need exposure to germs. Children need to develop a tolerance to what they will be exposed to throughout their life, and by depriving them of this exposure, we risk them harm when exposed to a particularly malevolent germ that would otherwise do them no harm.

This isn’t to say that we ignore real bullying, whatever that may be.  But it has to be more, significantly more, than putting a post-it that says “kick me, please,” on a kid’s backside.  Do we want to raise a generation of kids who become suicidal if someone tells them their clothes are ugly?  Do we want to raise a generation of kids who are heading for jail for saying so? 

More disturbing than the article itself are the comments, where it is clearly reflected, in a newspaper whose readership is not known for its liberal bias, that there is no teacup too delicate to be protected from bullying.  It’s Reefer Madness applied to bullying, that this otherwise innocuous conduct is the gateway to Columbine.

Just as fears of child sex molestation led to the creation, and abuse, of sex offender registries and the inclusion of public urination as an offense that so taints a person as to make them a public pariah forever, our fears of bullying are turning every act short of blowing a kiss into a zero tolerance offense.  Heck, even blowing a kiss is likely to get a kid in trouble for sexual harassment.

There must be a viable way to distinguish what constitutes bullying and what comprises ordinary childhood goofing around.  Crafting this world of offense surrounding our children’s every action helps no one, neither the purported bully nor victim, so mature into a reasonably normal, healthy person.  There must be a way to distinguish conduct that warrants intervention, mandates punishment, and comprises a true threat, without sweeping every prank ever pulled by a child into the pile.

So if you happen to see me walking about and put a “kick me, please” post-it on my back, I won’t rat you out to the principal.  I may, however, kick back.  Just as I’ve taught my kids to do.

I would give a H/T for this post to Jonathan Turley, but I won’t since he never gives a hat tip to me.