I knew going into today's column that the comments would start spiking around mid-morning and go through the roof by noon.

Sometimes you just know a combination of certain phrases like "gay," "Michael Heath," "students," or "rights" is likely to get people's attention.

That can be a good thing and a bad thing.

The only rule is...no one gets hurt. Also, Adams has to be home by 11 p.m. or his mom will be worried. Oh, and no more than seven people can fit in my car. But other than that, anything goes.

Let's talk about pranks.

I spent a good portion of this morning trying to figure out how many blogs I was going to post today, a task made more difficult thanks to cold medication (thanks a lot fall, your creepy seesaw weather patterns are making me ill.).

In the end, I went for quality (in theory) over quantity. This is a long one, we got Halo 3, local music and youth radio on tap.

Two onging stories we’ve had in your Daily newspaper over the last several months have been the recent crackdowns on underage drinking in the Portland area, as well as the issue of who’s going to college and how its paid for.

The thing is, not everyone’s parents are going to be able to get them to the museum, music practice or theater group after school. Like most folks (or as older people like to say, “grown ups”) young people’s lives can be busy and complicated by things like working to support themselves and their families and taking care of siblings.

We’re roughly two weeks out from the end of the school year, and yet there seems to be no shortage of school news this time of year.

Whoever thinks high schools are not a microcosm for the larger world needs to take a look around. We’ve got two perfect examples of just what kind of difference young people can make in their schools and the world around them right here in Maine.

Over the last few years we’ve seen students trying to get more of a say in how schools work. If you think about it, in some ways you almost have to ask, why didn’t someone think of this sooner?