Collegiate Times

I saw a shirt one time that said, ?Whatever happens on spring break stays on spring break.? My mother and sister purchased the shirt for me with tongue in cheek last spring break when, instead of spending the week celebrating my youth in a haze of alcohol, uncomfortably-placed sand and high-brow hedonism, I was watching movies in a haze of milkshakes, ice packs and an unholy aggregate of doctor-prescribed narcotics.

I had just had my wisdom teeth removed. It was a blast. Instead of contemplating what I did the night before, as many of my colleagues did that week, I spent the week pondering the irony of the term ?wisdom teeth.? Are these teeth the very essence of wisdom itself? Am I now less intelligent for having lost these teeth? If a tooth is so wise, why does it hurt like a bastard? Couldn?t they devise a way to remove themselves?

In any case, nothing I did on spring break last year was wild enough to warrant the cautionary nature of the phrase ?what happens on spring break stays on spring break.?

But even if my spring break was wild and, in fact, the extraction of my wisdom teeth took place on a beach and was accompanied by several pitchers of beer, some girls from another state and some bad decisions, the phrase isn?t true. What happens on spring break will follow you and quite frankly, the fact that it does follow you provides all of us non-spring breakers with a great deal of enjoyment after the fact.

Not only can a non-spring breaker live vicariously through the many a sordid tale related to them after a week of non-stop partying (?ooh I can feel the shame?), but we can laugh at your general appearance: bags beneath your eyes, whiskey on your breath, inexplicable scars on hard to reach places such as your back, your inner thigh, and that space on your lower back where it?s not clear where your back ends and your butt starts. In other words, I may not be there when you?re out having fun and destroying yourself in the name of spring break, but I do plan to laugh at the after-effects.

Of course, I could just be jealous.

Spring break is a week of collegiate decadence that builds as many memories as holes in your memory. Everyone needs to cut loose and thousands of students will do so starting tomorrow.

Others will be cutting loose in other ways like lying on the couch, sleeping past noon or spending time with their parents. It?s a bit less dramatic but it?s easier on your dignity than most normal spring break trips.

Whatever you do next week, be safe and have fun. Come back rested and in possession of many hilarious self-deprecating stories.

Travel safe young ones.