A recent blurb in our monthly homeowner's newsletter addressed a serious neighborhood problem: T.P.ing. You know, the annual right of Spring (or Fall) when energetic youth turn their attentions toward school spirit, Homecoming, Prom or just plain messing around in a friend's front yard at one in the morning. The end result: a riotous display of Charmin, Northern and Angel Soft. What could be more "good, clean wholesome fun" than the deciduous distribution of a product known for cleaning up?

And yet, our newsletter didn't celebrate this stealthy endeavor, but rather, encouraged homeowners not only to clean it up (duh) but to notify the police, presumably in order to prosecute the culprits! What ever happened to "It Takes a Village"?

Don't get me wrong; I appreciate that, on occasion, a T.P. attack can be more malicious than mischievous. And certainly, I agree that it needs to be cleaned up. Hopefully before it rains/snows, and definitely with the assistance of the targeted teen.

But more often than not, late night T.P.ing is an honored tradition inspired by what is often a mix of bubbling energies, sleepovers and a wide-eyed lack of anything sillier to do in the middle of the night than grab your mom's entire supply of toilet paper and sneak over to a friend's house unseen. If you can distract the friend by keeping them on the phone during the actual attack-all the better.

Naturally, I don't condone anything done with actual malice. And I definitely don't approve of the addition of shaving cream (corrosive on car paint) or eggs (a real pain to clean up after they dry!). But I can truly say that I see the whimsy in a well thrown roll of double-ply (easier to pull out of a tree than single ply, by the way).

I don't approach this subject lightly, I assure you. My home has been the target of many such assaults. Thanks for our high tech securty system-our barking dogs-we have caught kids running from the scene or hiding in bushes. My husband and one of our dogs even chased a group of giggling girls, through a snowy night, until he tripped over the dog and ended up head over heals in the snow, laughing.

One strike lives in legend in our home. We were out of town; a particularly low blow in T.P. wars. We arrived home from a road trip late one July day to discover we'd been hit with what we found out later was a epic 52 roll salvo of the white stuff. We knew in an instant who the masterminds were (they left irrefutable evidence behind--large orange traffic cones that were widely known to be in their possession by every kid in the neighborhood.)

While our son and his friends spent the ensuing weeks--pretty much the entire summer--plotting their counter insurgency, we spent the rest of the year picking up the occasional square or two that had eluded us in our initial cleanup, only to fall victim to autumn winds, winter snows or spring rains.

Please don't misunderstand. The initial clean-up was thorough, but in any major strike, there are bound to be some remnants of the lingering offensive that are obvious only to those who live with them. A few kids were occasionally apprehended in the act and forced to clean up their not-so-dirty work on the spot. And my entire family has pulled its share of toilet paper from trees over the years-not exactly hard labor.

But over those years, no neighbors were offended, no homeowner's rules violated, no police called.

If we're going to start notifying the authorities when kids do silly things, what's left of childhood? Maybe it's the adults who need to grow up.