When did Spring Break become the one week in the year when you have to go to a sunny beach and destroy your health by drinking away your immune system and sleeping away your chance of not getting HIV? Whoever decided this should really be prosecuted by anyone who has had his health, virginity, pride or STD test compromised during Spring Break.
Spring Break has become the time of year when it is accepted and even expected to be drunk by 10 in the morning and get no more than four hours of sleep a night, drink no less than 25 drinks per 24-hour period and get no less than a second-degree sunburn. Which world power made this the way it is?
If I had to guess, I would say that the alcohol conglomerates all joined together under the guidance of MTV and created the first MTV Spring Break using a blue screen in some Los Angeles sound stage. How long has MTV Spring Break been happening for anyway? A decade, if that. It did not just pop up out of nowhere. It’s not as if all of a sudden 10,000 college kids of all varieties — from fraternity brothers all the way to sorority sisters — just decided to go to Cancun and tear the town apart, spreading the word of Zeta Beta Tau. Fraternities have the power to do a lot in this world — they can throw a basement party like no one else in Allston and harass freshmen into buying their friendship better than anyone I know. But were they really behind the corruption of all the beautiful Mexican coastal towns? I seriously doubt it.
It is an atrocity and an offense that in our country, college students feel they did not have a great Spring Break unless they spent it carousing on a beautiful beach somewhere, wreaking as much havoc on the local community as they do on their livers.
Let me send a message to those kids who are in the majority that share this belief: It is erroneous! Erroneous on all counts! You can have a wonderful Spring Break making the trip from freezing-cold Boston to even-colder Wisconsin and spending the week shoveling the driveway with your pops. I would say it’s even better to travel less — if you live in New England, you don’t even have to put your body through the stress of climate change or traveling to a different time zone. How nice is that?
Just to paint a picture in your mind, so you really get how awful it is, let me ask you this: Would you rather be in the beautiful Midwest somewhere, in the heart and soul of our country, frolicking in beautiful wheat fields, or in eastern Mexico, where English isn’t even the native language, trying to order a margarita at a bar that is literally washed up into in the hotel pool? Would you rather be sipping a classic American lager like Budweiser, watching March Madness on your couch with some buddies, or having half-naked women come around pouring shots into your mouth and grabbing your butt while you rub up on some foreign girl to Snoop Dogg’s latest masterpiece? Would you rather fall asleep in your cozy single bed and wake up to the smell of bacon on the stove that your lovely mother graciously cooked up for you or pass out on a beach at 6 in the morning as the sun comes up, waking to the sounds of Three 6 Mafia and Young Jeezy and a waitress taking your drink order? Just let that marinate for a minute before you rush to answer.
I hope you would all prefer to be home, cozy and safe. Some may argue that they need to leave the country to get some culture. To that, all I would do is snort.
Someone needs to tell these ignorant, malleable college kids that Mexico is not the way to go. Wisconsin is. Home is. This is our country, our homeland, and to feel the need to leave it for a place where more English is spoken than in California is simply wrong.
Where did I go, you ask? Last year, it was Cancun, and I loved every minute of it. And this year? Acapulco, here I come, baby!
