The trick to throwing the perfect toilet paper arc over a tree has three steps: Unravel 2 or 3 feet of the roll. Hold it sideways in one hand, so the length of toilet paper falls over top of your fingers. And let it roll off your hand as you launch it as high as you can.
Seniors at Marietta High School learn the science every year as they “roll” the school the night before the first day of classes. That’s how roughly 200 12th graders found themselves throwing toilet paper at every tree, bush and building in the front of the school Wednesday evening. The effect is thousands of streams of tissue billowing in the breeze, like ribbons or tendrils of hair. The white lengths can certainly be seen from the road. It’s possible they could be seen from space.
“Don’t aim at, aim up — so it can go over,” advised Kaleb Whitlow, the student body president. He spoke from experience, after his first roll got stuck in a tree right around 7 p.m. But he got the hang of it, continuously throwing and picking up and throwing the same roll until its entire contents were looped over a tree in front of the band room.
“It’s a moment that 10 years down the line, (we’re) going to look back on and be like, ‘Dang, that was so fun,’” he said. “You’re connected to your peers, and that’s such a big thing going into your senior year.”
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Kaleb, 17, can’t believe he’s a senior. He can’t believe that after walking onto the campus three years ago and being shocked by the swathes of white paper floating all around him, now it’s his turn. And he can’t believe how quickly the school was covered.
It only took five minutes, really, to cover all the trees at the center of the parking lot and on either side of the school’s entrance. But the students kept coming, bringing packages of toilet paper with them, which they kept throwing. Kaleb brought 36 rolls himself and was debating going to buy more.
Untold numbers of toilet paper rolls have blanketed the school since the tradition started sometime in the 1960s. It used to be a prank, the Marietta Daily Journal reported: Seniors would do it on a random day, not necessarily the first, and be punished if (when) they were caught. Over the years, it became more relaxed. A 1995 article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (which then existed as two newspapers) claimed that students who rolled the school would be lightly punished, likely having to pay a fine equal to the wages of the custodian who had to clean everything up.
Credit: File photo
Credit: File photo
Now, the administrators are in on it. Principal Marvin Crumbs was one of the first to arrive, and Assistant Principal Omar Feliciano threw the first roll. And the students clean up after themselves.
“It’s the culminating moment of becoming a senior, prior to graduation,” Crumbs said. “It links them to all the graduation classes that have preceded them. And it cements them pretty much into Marietta history and tradition.”
It’s important to the students each year to do it bigger and better than the class that came before them. Kaleb was sure they had the previous class beat by 8 p.m. Crumbs, standing in the parking lot on top of strips of discarded paper, disagreed: “There was way more last year. I told them, they’re doing more socializing than they are toilet paper throwing.”
Crumbs may have had a point. As the sun went down, students grouped together for photos, wrapped each other in toilet paper like mummies and flung rolls at each other. Some latecomers with leaf blowers able to shoot multiple rolls at a time into branches may have helped level the playing field with the previous years.
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
Realization started to hit as it truly got dark: “Bro, we got school tomorrow,” one student lamented to his friend. Maddie Johnson, the senior class president, said she feels ready for her senior year. “It feels like the right timing,” she said. For Kaleb, it feels like it’s all happening really quickly.
“It’s crazy. I mean, two years ago everyone’s asking me how high school’s going,” he said. “And now it’s like, where are you going to college? I’m like, what?!”
At least for one night — the last night before the last first day, before filling out college applications and graduation and goodbyes — it felt nice to Kaleb to have fun throwing toilet paper around with his friends.
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