We are now well into Fall in beautiful, crime-free Iuka. Fall comes every year a little differently around here. Fall doesn’t begin at the Autumn Equinox, like in most of the country. No, it isn’t Fall in Iuka until you get your first debilitating sinus headache from four different neighbors burning leaves at the same time. I have no idea what makes the leaves of Tishomingo County so toxic that every time they’re burned they set off headaches, asthma attacks, and mental breakdowns in so many - it may have to do with how prevalent yard rolling is around here. Maybe the leaves get mixed in with Charmin until they intertwine on a molecular level that causes them to burn as an irritant that not so much causes your eyes to water but more like causes your face to melt off Chernobyl-style.

Speaking of yard rolling, I was afraid my column last week on that subject would put a target on my lawn. I worried some teenagers would take my dislike of the practice as a challenge. After all, in my limited experience if you want to get teenagers to do anything you have to do the Bugs Bunny thing where you switch to the opposite of your argument to trick them into thinking it’s their idea to do the task - whether it’s eating vegetables or not vandalizing the Mineral Springs Park. But the Clark family trees remained miraculously toilet paper-free the last few days. I do not credit this to a sudden stretch of good behavior by local teens - you preachers out there are doing a good job in the pulpit but let’s not expect miracles. No, we didn’t get rolled because what teenagers are reading a physical newspaper? I can’t believe I thought teenagers would unfold the local paper, sit down in their easy chair, light up their pipe and catch up on the local interest stories while an old dog lay at their feet. No, as long as my columns stay off of any social media app that can be viewed on a cell phone, I could take out a front-page advertisement announcing I’m handing out $10,000 to every 16-year-old Friday night at City Hall and no one would show up (except maybe a 65 year-old in a flimsy disguise). No, to reach the young-uns I would have to Snapchat it - whatever that means - or make a proclamation via an interpretive dance on Tik Tok.       

I suddenly realized that, given the average age of a reader of physical print media, I could probably make up a social media app out of thin air and you wouldn’t know the difference. I could call it Buzz or WhatSpace or Google+ - it all sounds equally ridiculous. I do not want to turn this column into a “back in my day things were better” piece (although music, movies and society in general peaked in the 1990s), but back in my day, the only friend you shared pictures with was whoever was the one-hour photo technician at WalMart. The one-hour photo tech remains, of course, the greatest job ever conceived for solitary perverts.

I will tell you one place where you won’t catch any self-respecting teenager documenting information that will later be used against them in a job interview: Facebook. Parents, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. If your teenagers have you convinced that their primary social media presence is their Facebook page … well, let’s just say they are at least hiding an Instagram that is so racy it would burn your eyebrows worse than Iuka leaves.