You Should Know Better…

Johnny-on-the-Spot … by John Foster …

As a youngster, I was a tree climber.

We had a wooded area in the neighborhood I grew up in and we kids would play there.

A lot.

After an especially grueling day of sandlot baseball, I would often escape to “the woods” and climb a favorite tree.

I’d scale to a perch 20+ feet in the air until I located that special sport where the shade was best and the branches were positioned for relaxation.

It was a great place to watch the world go by and cool down since actual air conditioning was limited in those days to basements with dehumidifiers.

And, on occasion I would unsheathe my trusty Swiss Army knife and use that blade to mark my initials in the bark.

On occasion, I’d scratch “JF” + my latest childhood lover interest.

If that tree is still standing, you might find “JF + SB” or “KP” or “JS”.

I will leave additional identification of these childhood romances to you.

It’s just what we did.

Now, I’m certain their is an arborist who would tell you that I was defacing that treet if not actually leading it to an early demise.

But I gotta tell you I wasn’t carving too deep in the bark because that old Swiss Army knife would struggle with a stick of butter, even with a hot blade.

However, I came across a news story recently about a British young man who has videotaped carving his initials plus those of his current heart throb into the walls of an old building.

A very old building.

Would you believe the walls of the Roman Coliseum?

This elliptical structure was completed in 80AD.

Not 19-80.

The one some 2,000 years ago.

What really irked me was the look on this offender’s face.

It was sort of, “Isn’t this cute, what I’m doing?”

This guy was gouging his initials into the limestone walls of the structure that the great chariot race in “Ben Hur” was depicted.

Charlton Heston as Judah Ben-Hur and Stephen Boyd as the villainous Messala in that epic 9 minute chariot race.

And somebody thought their initials scraped into the limestone, volcanic rock and concrete-faced bricks was proper.

Since then, at least two other teens, one from Italy and the other from Germany have been caught similarly vandali