Nice Time! High School Votes Adorbs Guys 'Cutest Couple'

Here are Bradley Taylor and Dylan Meehan of Carmel, New York, a couple of nice young men who were voted "Cutest Couple" in their high school yearbook. Thanks to that news, they are also one of those Internet Sensations we hear tell of, and at least in the early phases, they seem to be weathering the attention fairly well, mostly by being cute and gracious. This appears to bepart of a trend that we can get behind, YAY.

"It's been insane," said Taylor, 17. "We are very, very proud to show that Carmel High School is the way it is."

See? Kid already knows how to say nice things and humbly share the honor with his high school. And how about their parents?

Taylor's father, Robert Taylor, said he doesn't understand all the attention this has spawned.

"I don't know why there's such a big deal being made about this," he said. "In this day and age, it's normal."

Pretty damned nice, we'd say -- apart from leaving us with absolutely nothing snotty to add, which we suppose we can deal with.

Want some more cute? Here is more cute!

Taylor and Meehan have been together since last June, after they were introduced by a friend and then went on a tour of Brown University together.

The two came out to their family and friends a week later.

Both agreed they have received nothing but love and support from everyone, allowing them to feel comfortable at home and school about being openly gay. There are only a handful of gay couples at Carmel High, they said, and most are girls.

"No one treats us any differently from straight couples," Meehan said.

Taylor added that no one has ever said anything negative to their faces about their relationship.

"We're both six-foot something," he said. "What are they going to say?"

But surely there was pushback from the school, you know, like banning them from the prom or something? We bet the school administration cracked down right on this nonsense!

Principal Kevin Carroll said tolerance is stressed all the time at the school, but he thinks acceptance of gays is not much of an issue for current high schoolers.

"You can still hear about a gay man being attacked in New York City," he said, referring to a recent killing in Greenwich Village, "but these kids don't think that way."

However, officials were concerned enough that they checked with the boys and their parents before the "cutest couple" selection was memorialized in the yearbook.

What is WITH these people? And can we bottle it for distribution? Just about the only thing we've found to mock about any of this is the weird way our own ISP's news aggregator cropped the yearbook photo, chopping off the boys' heads (for privacy? In a story about a photo that's all over the web?) and Dylan's hand, which is maybe too shocking for the average reader's sensibilities:

Then again, our ISP also has a habit of running headlines about horrific bus crashes in India that kill 20 people, illustrated with a photo of a shiny yellow American school bus, so yeah.Here, have some more of these fine young media phenoms:

Update: Annoying autoplay video deleted. It's at theUSAToday link if you want to see it, and not here anymore if you don't like automagic noise on Yr Wonket.

[ USA Today / ABC News ]