April 03, 2006

Fear in America

So there's a website out there where someone wrote instructions for how to make your own real-life Super Mario Blocks (you know, from Super Mario Brothers) and suggestions to hang them up around town in public spaces to bring smiles to people's faces. Being a child of the 80s I think it's great... I loved Super Mario Brothers! And a lot of people have made them and hung them up around their towns, as evidenced on the website that started it all.


Recently some high school girls created their own and placed them around their town in Ohio. And... people called the cops because they were afraid of the suspicious packages they saw. And the girls "turned themselves in" explaining that it was just for fun and meant no harm. But they still may face criminal charges because "The potential is always present when dealing with a suspicious package that it could be deadly," McCoy said. "In today’s day and age, you just cannot do this kind of stuff."


I don't know if I'm outraged at the ridiculousness of this situation and these police officers who think that pressing charges on teenages who didn't do anything wrong is the right thing to do, or if I'm just sad at the state of our nation that people are scared by powder residue left by doughnuts and shiny gift-wrapped boxes.

No comments: