Dear God.

I didn’t say anything when the kid was punished for chewing his Pop-Tart into the shape of a grape-flavored gun. I didn’t write a word when another kid in another school was disciplined for pointing his finger at a classmate. But this? Pencil twirling? Now the acrobatic display of a writing utensil is enough to get a kid labeled a gun nut and tossed out of school?

You’ve probably heard this story by now. At a middle school in New Jersey, young Ethan Chaplin deftly twirled a common pencil between his fingers. A classmate, full of youthful mischief, yelled, “He’s making gun motions! Send him to juvie!”

Ha ha! Silly kids!

But there is no room left for silly, my friends. Ever-vigilant school officials jumped into action, swiftly hustling the pencil-twirler from the classroom. The seventh-grader was suspended. Before he goes back to school, he’ll have to be evaluated by mental health experts. You know, to make sure he doesn’t plan to wipe out the school with a No. 2 pencil or perhaps with an assault Sharpie.

Welcome to Salem, Mass., circa 1692 when a mere accusation of witchery got a brother hanged. Only instead of witchcraft, a kid can find himself in deep doo-doo today for mentioning guns, thinking about guns, drawing guns or making gestures that are sort of gun-like.

Seriously, a pencil? A Pop-Tart? Legos?

Kids have been forced to remove hats with patriotic logos and T-shirts in support of the Second Amendment. Schools have been locked down because some tyke showed up to class with a squirt gun in his backpack. Students have been sent home (and a few have been criminally charged) for drawing dangerous stick figures, blowing spitballs and cutting paper into terrifying L-shapes.

Do you feel safer?

In the wake of 9/11, we all feared the terrorists. We had to check that ridiculous terror threat chart before venturing out of our homes. Oh, no! Today is classified as Condition Orange! Better stay inside where it’s safe and give thanks to the Patriot Act.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, things have gotten even goofier, with zero-tolerance policies reaching new levels of absurdity. All it takes is an accusation these days and everybody’s got a rape whistle. Mrs. Jones! Timmy pointed his finger at me and now I’m scared!

Boom! Little Timmy is gone, cast out of school and labeled a potentially dangerous malcontent because he flicked a booger at a classmate with a motion that sort of resembled gunplay. Kind of. You just can’t take any chances in these dangerous times.

The striking thing in all of this is that kids are doing what kids have always done, with their horseplay and shenanigans and boundary-testing. It’s the adults of the world, once beacons of sanity, who are convinced that boogeymen await around every corner; that giving up a little freedom is OK as long as it keeps us safe.

“Timid men,” observed Thomas Jefferson, “prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.”

Or as French author Andre Gide put it, “There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.”

I don’t like to rail too loudly against men and women who probably believe they are protecting children by hyper-reacting to commonplace tomfoolery. But you have to wonder how any of these kids are going to shuffle into adulthood without being afraid of their own shadows. You have to wonder if any good can come of teaching them to fear inanimate objects or of rewarding them for ratting out their peers and treating child’s play as terrorism.

American schools have become Sanity Free Zones where a lad can be punished, not for committing a crime but for acting like he someday might. It’s a war on precrime, just like Philip K. Dick warned us.

Or maybe it’s all part of some calculated move to make us afraid and to keep us that way. In fact, when you get in close and sniff it, all this hysteria starts to smell like a shrewd political agenda, doesn’t it?

Now there’s something to be afraid of.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. He can sniff out a shrewd agenda quicker than a bloodhound can find a Pop-Tart. Email him at mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.

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