COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:

Happens every year. You can set your DVR by it. It is supposed to be a secret. But I’m guessing at least 100 people know when it’s going to happen, down to the minute, and that includes kids and cops.

Every year, when school starts, the senior class at Estancia High School toilet papers Mesa Verde Drive, Fairview Park and whatever else they can get their rolls on before the first loud car or barking dog spooks them.

We live on Mesa Verde Drive, and it’s a perennial rite of fall that’s been going for at least 30 years, more or less. Year after year, on the morning after Labor Day, as I make my customary left turn onto Mesa Verde Drive, no one needs to remind me it’s the first day back at Estancia.

For years, Mesa Verde Drive from Adams Avenue to Baker Street was the bright white star of the TP show, but the action seems to have moved to Fairview Park, with more artistry involved these days.

This year, the seniors spelled out an encoded TP message in Fairview Park that read “4U ASS09 PARENTS,” which is either affectionate or insulting, depending on your reading.

It either means “For You, Associated Students 2009 Parents” or “For You Asinine Parents.” We will be offering no translation here, thank you.

This year, things didn’t go exactly as planned in the wee hours of Labor Day night. Costa Mesa police were in place, waiting, watching, ready to roll the moment anyone suspicious unrolled.

Eight Estancia seniors were stopped on charges of unauthorized unfurling of unwrapped toilet paper in an exterior setting and issued citations for violating curfew, the softest response available. That deterred the other seniors all the way to Wednesday night, when others returned to finish the job. And don’t think this is just teens gone wild.

“My mom actually woke me up and told me it was time to go do it,” said one anonymous senior. “It’s like the first senior activity of the year.”

According to Estancia senior Natalie Plascentcia, “they think they’ll stop it, but they won’t. [Seniors] will do it two days later. They’ll do it in November, in December. You never know. You just never know.”

That is so true, Nat. You just never know what people will do, sometimes in the strangest places.

It did get me to thinking though, which is never good, call it what you like … toilet-papering, TPing — who started it? Who was the first kid to look at a roll of toilet paper, slap his forehead and say, “Dude, Becky’s house, tonight. This is, like, perfect!”

The short answer is — nobody knows. I could find nothing about the origin, derivation and/or evolution of toilet papering as a nocturnal post-pubescent activity. The closest I came was a study by a Harvard University linguist named Bert Vaux, who had way too much time on his hands.

Somehow, Dr. Vaux determined it’s called “toilet papering” or “ TPing” in most of the country, but “rolling” in the South, and “wrapping” in Texas and Oklahoma. Exactly how do the Harvard peeps conduct the TP terminology study? Do they call people and ask them? Send out surveys? I don’t get it.

Did my kids do it? Of course they did. Did we get TP’d? Of course we did, which would prompt a terribly touching song and dance from our kids that it was a sign that other kids really liked you. The dweebs never got TP’d, just the popular kids, they said.

I never quite followed the logic of that and developed a method of dealing with it that may well have been the only thing I ever did as a parent that actually worked.

When I stumbled out to the driveway to retrieve newspapers at the crack of dawn only to find our house and every bit of flora around it draped in white, I would roust both kids out of bed like a drill instructor with a bad hangover.

While they toiled in the pre-dawn grayness, I would stand in the door, double espresso in hand, and direct the operation. When they protested that I had no way of knowing whose friends actually did the deed, I told them, “True, but the only fair way to deal with that is to bust both of youse.”

After the second time they slouched around a moist lawn at 0610 in their PJs, dragging a large trash bag of shredded toilet paper behind them, the incidents of TP drama dropped dramatically.

Will the Costa Mesa PD or anyone else ever stop the first-day-back senior class Mesa Verde TP tantrum? I don’t see how. I have to agree with Natalie Plascentcia — the annual ritual is genetically embedded in Estancia seniors’ DNA.

It’s just the way life is. And you know what? You never know.

I gotta go.

PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays. He may be reached at ptrb4@aol.com.