Grab the tissues, Mom. You know those all-too-rare stories that restore your faith in humanity? This is one of those.

It's the story of Whitney Kropp, a small-town Michigan teen whose peers nominated her to homecoming court (making her a finalist for homecoming queen) -- as a mean joke. Whitney is described as "a free spirit with few friends. Her black outfits and strange hair colors don't mesh well with other kids in the rural community."

As Whitney's mother says, "She's just sweet. She doesn't have a mean bone in her body."

Well, once Whitney got wind of her nomination being a "big old joke," she was briefly embarrassed. And then she got her optimistic groove back. "Going to homecoming to show thm that I'm not a joke," she declared on Facebook. "I'm a beautiful person and you shouldn't mess with me!"

Her tiny farm town of West Branch, Michigan, gradually heard about the high schoolers' cruel intentions (mostly thanks to a "Support Whitney Kropp" Facebook page set up by a woman from the town) and rallied around Whitney.

Local businesses offered up everything from dinner before homecoming, to salon services, a beautiful gown and shoes, and even homecoming photos. Empathetic adults offered to escort Whitney to the homecoming game, where she'll be driven around the football field with the rest of the homecoming court. And thousands of supporters plan to attend the homecoming game, sporting orange (her favorite color) "Team Whitney" T-shirts and cheering her on.

Brace yourself for your local movie theater to be taken over by millions of shrieking fans -- not of wizards, werewolves, and vampires -- but of... warring teenagers? I thought you just had to go to your local junior high hallways to take that in.

Hmm... I haven't gotten caught up in The Hunger Games mania yet, but I am planning to read the book(s) to find out why in the world it's all the rage. My loose understanding of it, based on the movie trailers I've seen, makes it look like some mix of Gattaca and Gladiator -- a futuristic world of fights to the death. But kids (age 12-18) are the ones doing the fighting... for what, I'm not sure yet.

Given that the world has plenty of real-life violence, bullying, and other teen-on-teen violence -- last month's shooting of Trayvon Martin and Ohio school shooting come to mind -- I don't know that this is the pop-culture phenom we need right now. But (for lack of a better phrase) The Hunger Games is blowing up.

A news story about a high school prank in my hometown has gotten a lot of attention -- and kinda sounds like a bad episode of Glee.

On the last day of school at Saratoga Springs High School in upstate New York (a very good public school, if I do say so myself), the faculty had to delay distributing the 2011 yearbook because a popular senior girl's photo had been doctored -- with her front teeth Photoshopped to be gold.  The girl, Maya Kurchner, and her parents were naturally furious.

This was the first year that the yearbook was self-published, or designed and planned entirely by the school yearbook committee rather than the yearbook company (we'll see if that happens again!). The yearbook advisor, school administrators, and faculty worked quickly to put out the fire of the girls' doctored photo when they discovered the tampered page by clipping out Maya's picture (and the pic of the boy on the back side of that page) in all the yearbooks before handing them out to students. Later, the school announced that they and the yearbook company would cover the cost of a reprint of the 1,000 yearbooks for all the high schoolers.

Police are investigating the incident. Many in the community are calling it a case of bullying that should lead to an arrest. Others are saying it was a fairly innocent prank (and are quick to note Maya is a not-so-nice Queen Bee -- and an aspiring star who launched a single on the local pop radio station the same week the tarnished yearbooks came out).

I was a pretty late bloomer. At the time, I felt kind of weird about it, like I was missing out on something. Now I know. The earlier you bloom, the longer you have to deal with all that... girl stuff.

As I was sitting outside and eating my lunch at the local mall yesterday, I overheard a conversation between a mom and her early-teen (I would guess) daughter. Well, I’m not sure it was a conversation, as much as it was an encounter. Okay, conflict. Yes, I overheard a conflict between the mom and her kid.