UPDATE: Japanese Teens Are Licking Each Other’s Eyeballs And Giving Each Other Sexy Sexy Pinkeye

Let’s hope this trend doesn’t catch on in good ol’ Americuh’ because the idea of anyone touching or stroking or LICKING my eyeball is totally freaking me out. It’s like some sexy sexy version of a Luis Buñuel movie that is not sexy at all and just plain creepy like whoa. From Shanghaist:

After eye patches suddenly took off among middle school students in Japan, teachers were confused but ultimately decided it was just another weird fashion craze. However, a post by a middle school teacher, originally shared on Naver Matome and translated by Japan Crush, describes the disturbing trend behind the patches:

After class one day, I went into the equipment store in the gymnasium to tidy up. The door had been left open, and when I looked inside, a male pupil and a female pupil had their faces close together and were kind of fumbling around. Could it be bullying? I wondered, but when I had a good look, the boy was licking the girl’s eye! Surprised, a shouted ”What are you doing? Stop it at once!” and the two of them were so shocked they jumped apart. The girl burst into tears, and the boy just went bright red and was shaken up. At any rate, to try to calm them down I took them to the janitor’s room and listened to their story.

On questioning, the two students revealed that eyeball licking is basically like second base – what you graduate to after Frenching.

Mr. Y immediately told the school staff the story. A classroom assembly for the year 6 students was held, and when each homeroom teacher questioned the students, it was revealed that a surprising one third of the kids had done ”eyeball licking”, or had had their eyeballs licked.

Whatever happened to good old fashioned hand holding or having underage sex or collecting Pokemons! I can see wanting to wear an eyepatch because eyepatches are badass and make you look like a pirate but you can wear an eyepatch without contracting pink eye! I don’t understand this. I do not wanna do this. I do not want my kids to do this. Not for any moralistic reasons, just because it seems so creepy and unsanitary. Now, if you all are big eyeball lickers and I have zero idea of what I am missing out on feel free to eyeball shame me in the comments. Until then I’m going to be compulsively washing my hands and possibly crying and maybe washing my eyes.

UPDATE:

I just received an E-mail that directed me to this blog that claims this story is so NOT true:

I contacted three Japanese professional organizations, including two opthamological associations and an organization of school clinicians. Queries were also sent to a professor of nursing at a national university and a Yokohama-based ophthalmologist. None of them had the faintest idea of what I was talking about. None knew anything about the rampant spread of disease.

Convinced at this point that the story was based on a hoax, I fired off mails to editors who saw fit to run the story, at Raw Story, the SF Chronicle, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Shanghailist and several others. A few responded. None of them were prompted to remove the story from their site.

Now if I discover kids aren’t really having French Fry parties, I will be crushed.

(Photo: deepblue-photographer/shutterstock)