Well, it's a slow news day here at Action News Central, and I haven't written a postcard from my last couple of trips. Today's topic is the obsolescence of adolescence (read: you're not getting any younger). One of the things that adolescence brings to a young man is a deep sense of the scatologically humorous. Many a prep-school prank is based on this: the exploding toilets, the competitions over who could make the...uhh, well, you don't want to know. But there's a worldwide trend that will forever preempt one of my favorite schoolboy tricks. I'm referring, of course, to high-velocity urinals. These are the water-saving devices that are replacing the old fashioned ones as they wear out. Now you might wonder how much usage it would take to wear out an 80 pound porcelan device, but there are real reasons to replace urinals often. It may come crashing off the wall as a result of being used as a chair. It could get cracked during a washroom brawl. It falls victim to M-80 detonations. In other words, these things happen. The world's inventory of urinals has to be replaced every couple of years. One of the true joys of adolescence comes from putting small metallic objects inside the exit tube of a urinal. For example, an Eisenhower dollar will sit temptingly at the bottom of the funnel basically forever: every patron will think once, twice, even three times about rescuing the currency...but it will stay there for weeks (really, try it!). A Susan B. Anthony will work equally well, and fits more models without risking the possibility of blockage the way Ike does. But the new-fangled urinals mess all this up. They use the Bernoulli principle, using less water at higher velocity to do the work. The physics involved are simple: a smaller hole. And that's where the the problem becomes apparent: no heavy coin will fit down there, and any dime you put there makes a hasty exit upon the first use. Without a coin in the funnel, there's nothing funny about a urinal. Even worse, one of the best corollary pranks used to be putting a zipper shuttle (I think that's what it's called...the thingie that you pull up to zip a zipper) in place of the coin. This trick used to cause all patrons to wonder who it was that was walking around without closure. But since the zipper weighs much less than the big coins, even though it fits nicely in the high-velocity models it is quickly swept away. One of life's simple pleasures is being systematically removed, and there really won't be a good substitute. An entire subculture has grown around urinal fun, and growing boys will need to find an outlet for their creativity. Who knows how the male psyche will be stunted. dave