An increasing number of US schools are using time limits to battle the latest threat to our children, the epidemic of teenage hugging. Gabrielle Brown, a freshman at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, says that this perilous form of physical intimacy, which involves closing or holding the arms around another person or group of persons, has become so popular that students easily slip into its dark embrace. Brown says, "If somebody were to not hug someone, to never hug anybody, people might be just a little wary of them and think they are weird or peculiar." Noreen Hajinlian, principal of George G. White School adds, "Touching and physical contact is very dangerous territory." For her sake, I hope Noreen will be spared the horror of learning what usually happens on prom night.