THE WAY WE LIVE NOW

Hidden Lessons

Our name for him was ''the principal of vice,'' an ancient wisecrack we
thought that we'd invented.

He wore a funeral director's dark suit and tie, but his shoes were brown
sneakers with soft treads -- the better to creep up on us, we figured.

He liked to wrap an arm around our shoulders and ask us, in a casual, jolly
tone that masked the alertness of a customs agent, how we were doing or
what was up at home. We said nothing; one tiny confession might lead to others.

At last, perhaps after growing frustrated with his failure to penetrate our
ninth-grade demimonde, he dropped the big one over the P.A. system, ruining
his buddy act forever: ''Schoolwide locker check in 15 minutes!

All students will go to their lockers and stand by.''

Afterward, certain students grumbled about their ''privacy'' -- complaints
that made them seem guilty, at least to me. Me, I'd never felt I needed
privacy, perhaps because I'd always been granted it. The presumption of
innocence, until it's taken, isn't something most kids are aware of. It's
like air.

But that was two decades ago; the searches were cruder then. I'm not sure
how I might react to the new versions.

These days, the public-school principals of vice can, on just as short
notice, distribute Dixie cups and send their charges to the lavatories.
Once, only athletes faced these random drug tests, but lately there has
been a move in scattered school districts to extend the chemical dragnet to
anyone involved in extracurricular activities, from debate to choir.

The issue is under review by the Supreme Court, and experts predict that it
will rule in favor of asking America's teenagers to prove their purity by
unzipping at the whim of school administrators.

If this happens, the results should raise some interesting questions,
particularly for middle-aged Americans who grew up immune to such
intrusions -- often to their abiding benefit, as they might never have
played varsity basketball, or even earned their diplomas, had things been
stricter. Indeed, it's fashionable now for former drug users, from media
stars to presidential candidates, to treat what they invariably call their
''youthful experimentation'' as an understandable silly season that they're
wiser, more fully human, for having passed through.

The acceptable level of indulgence has never been quantified, and the
statute of limitations never spelled out, but a lot of adults now seem to
feel that drug use, if it went undetected and if it's in the past,
constitutes a modern rite of passage rather than grounds for expulsion from
normal society.

The war stories of their children will be different.

Some who might not have been caught under the old regime almost surely will
be under the new. Certain scholarships and distinctions will go unclaimed
by certain students who might have won them handily.

Certain field goals by certain players will never be kicked.

It could even be that certain presidential campaigns, which under the
current rules require confessions that the press and the public can chew on
and then forgive, will never get going in the first place. Meanwhile, other
kids will become masters of deceit and will brag about their slyness when
they get older (''Then there was the time I smuggled in dog urine''). With
their unspotted records, these accomplished tricksters will most likely
surpass their less evasive peers to become our success stories, our leaders.

But most high-school students, I'll bet, will accept the inspections as
thoughtlessly as I did, and that's what troubles me. When I was a student
it was axiomatic that school was a training ground for citizenship in a
democratic society.

Basic obedience was expected, sure, but we also voted on this and that:
homecoming kings (elected royalty -- how American!), the design of new
baseball uniforms and so on. It was all a game, but it had a point: someday
you'll be free of this depressing place and these will be the rules. But
what sort of rules will kids who have grown accustomed to urological pop
quizzes make -- or find themselves all too willing to abide by?

Random drug testing is a type of hazing, and having been hazed by the
principals of vice, these kids will want to haze others, I suspect.

Tough treatment tends to be passed on, often with pride and usually to
one's juniors. That's how it works.

The children of zero tolerance may one day advocate less-than-zero
tolerance, whatever that will be. I don't want to know.

The teenagers of tomorrow may find out. There appears to be a logic to
locker searches -- they continually grow more thorough as the individuals
who have undergone them acquire the authority to conduct them. The cause of
the searches never disappears, though; all that's confiscated is the
innocence of the searched.

The privacy I didn't know I had because I'd always had it no longer exists,
at least in public schools, but the drugs are still there.

Some new ones, too. One substance that the testers could probably find a
lot of is Ritalin -- the amphetamine-related stimulant that some
public-school administrators practically mandate for unruly pupils.

As the growing use of Ritalin proves, school officials aren't against drugs
themselves, even those that substantially alter consciousness; they're
merely out to detect illegal drugs, which a cynical high-school debater
might define as any drugs that they don't dispense themselves.

But, really, what do I care? I'm home free. The principal of vice found
nothing on me. Was there something to find that day? I'll never tell. I
don't have to tell, but I pity the kids who do, even the innocent.

The innocent most of all.

Walter Kirn is the literary editor of GQ. His most recent book is ''Up in
the Air,'' a novel.