Graffiti: A Mark of Class and Distinction

Who thinks graffiti is awesome?

Don't bother raising your hands. I can just tell by the paint stains on your fingers.

What a wonderful sense of power you must feel as you express yourself and show the world that you, an otherwise ordinary teenager, have the ability to write your name on other people's property. What a festive air your illegible scrawls add to any neighborhood. What a wonderful demonstration of the triumph of the public school system.

Certainly, the homeowner would not have built such a boring, pristine wall if they did not intend for you to improve it with your sophomoric decorative ability. Yes, tagging is a great boon to everyone. People love seeing your handiwork livening up an otherwise antiseptic area. How generous of you to share your "art" with the world, for free, in spaces where everyone can see it.

If you really think tagging is fun, though, you should probably try to share the experience and bring it home, so you can enjoy it as much as those people whose views you have so lovingly graffitied. Why not invite adults—me, for example—over to your home? Show me your bedroom. Let me take stock of all your most prized possessions, those materials objects for which you have worked the hardest, saved the longest. I want you to experience that same sensation I feel when I see the gift you've left on my fence.

I'll bring my Sharpie. Indelible ink is so much fun. Once you let me know which objects you have toiled so hard to earn, I will demonstrate my ability to write my name on your stuff. Isn't that great? Now you can understand the joy I feel when I see your juvenile territorial markings.

Oh, wait, I forgot. You're a teenager. You probably don't have any expensive stuff, and if you do, you probably didn't work to earn it, and if you did, you are most likely not blessed with the free time and amoral creativity that possesses some adolescents to uglify other peoples' things with their name.

Yes, you certainly have made that fence your own, much in the same way that my cat has also taken possession of the same real estate by urinating upon it. Congratulations.