Nature is healing.

If you don't know, teen boys sometimes do stupid things.

INCREDIBLY STUPID THINGS.

When 19-year-old Asher Vann was in 8th grade in 2021, he and a group of boys from his class at Haggard Middle School in Plano had a sleepover.

They naturally decided to prank each other, because of course.

The boys decided on a competition of willpower, challenging each other to stay awake. They agreed that the first person to fall asleep would get pranked.

SeMarion Humphrey was the first to lose that battle with the Sandman.

The boys decided to grab a glass of apple juice and dribble some urine into it, then offer it to Humphrey. They woke him up, handed him the glass, and he took a sip. Realizing it tasted odd, he spit it out.

There were probably many laughs and prepubescent giggles at this point.

It was the end of an average male sleepover (they had also shot each other with BB guns earlier in the night to "test" various gear).

When Humphrey's mom heard about it, however, it went NEXT LEVEL.

The classmate's mom, Summer Smith, quickly went public with the race-based claims, alleging at the time that Vann and his cohort had also hurled slurs at and shot her then-13-year-old son with a BB gun in the racially motivated attack.

...

A Snapchat video of the incident quickly went viral and attracted national media attention, igniting calls for the teens involved to be charged and expelled from school.

Police investigated the saga but never arrested or charged anyone.

Vann later filed a lawsuit against Smith and her attorney, Kim Cole, alleging they ruined his life with a smear campaign that led to widespread public outrage.

"Ruined his life" isn't an understatement.

In our dumb BLM era, people's lives have been shattered by racial accusations like this. Vann received death threats. His college plans were disrupted. He spent his entire time in high school being treated as a pariah, despite the fact that police investigation cleared him of any wrongdoing.

Summer Smith didn't just paint Vann as a racist; like many other black individuals in the BLM era, she used the supposed racial attack to fundraise.

Smith raised $120,000 on GoFundMe. In awarding damages to Vann, the jury considered how she had spent that money.

From CBS 8:

Vann's lawyer, Justin Nichols, said he believes the jury was convinced in part by evidence he presented at trial about how Smith used the nearly $120,000 Cole's GoFundMe raised.

'The public had been lied to and misled, and when people thought they were giving money to help this kid go to a new school and get some professional help, none of the money was going for that purpose,' Nichols said.

According to reports, only $1,000 went toward those ends.

Smith apparently spent the rest of the money on:

• A designer dog

• Dining out

• Travel

• Beauty products

• Liquor and vapes

• Cell phones

• Car payments

• Rent and household costs, including streaming services

Understand, this story was promoted by national news outlets. ABC's Linsey Davis even featured Smith's GoFundMe on Good Morning America!

None of these outlets have reported on the fact that they helped enrich a lying woman at the expense of an innocent young man.

Smith has vowed to appeal the ruling.

Vann, meanwhile, says "There was no winner in the end."

I'll leave you with Vann's interview with Fox News this week: