Back to Real Life

Where have I been?

I have spent the last week in a mystical place called Ocean City, Maryland. This is a place unlike any other in the world. It is populated by a fascinating population of unique creatures known as White Trash. It is a beautiful place. Only in OC MD can you walk down Coastal Highway (the main street that happens to be a 4 lane highway) and get not one cat call, not two cat calls, but a grand total of 15 cat calls. There are Shoobie sightings to be had every day. It is not uncommon, indeed it is actually legal, to ride in the bed of a pickup truck. It is the chosen mode of transport for the White Trash. Males mainly ride up and down Coastal Highway all day, some even have convenient signs with slogans such as "Fuck me, Baby!" in case their throats are coarse from yelling.

That is Ocean City on any given day all summer. But last week was special. It was SENIOR WEEK. Most high schools have some form of senior week. I have no idea if it is anything like my experience. But here is my experience:

Rent a house at the beach for a week. 17 girls, no parents.
140 streets in Ocean City. Crammed into the many houses ad high rise buildings are the other graduating seniors in all the high school in the Towson area, actually in all of Maryland. The town is overrun with graduates. And alcohol.

I'm not exactly sure what is normal for high school seniors to be drinking but I doubt it is as much alcohol as was cosumed last week on Senior Week. 8 straight nights. Pre-game then party. Sleep off the hangover on the beach. I won't go into specifics but I am pretty sure the amount of contraband consumed was enough to classify most of us as alcoholics.

But it was one week. One week of guilt-free, rule-free, parent-free partying. There was much throwing up (not by me because I know my relative limits). There were many random hookups. There were many police citations. There were many drunken fist fights. There were several bad experiences involving Oxy-Codone. There was also a bad experience involving a cactus. There were numerous rides on the Drunk Bus. There were games of drunken put-put. There wre awkward run-ins. There was a hell of a shitload of sunburn. There were mysterious, high rappers. There were crabs of both kinds. There were more drunken texts than possible to count. And, more than anything else, there was DRAMA. All in seven days.

It was a week to remember...if only we could actually remember.

I won't go into specifics. Looking back there were fun parts (walking up to a random party on 84th street and finding out that the random house just happened to be my cousins'), there were meaningful parts (watching the sunrise on the beach with my best friends while talking about everything that meant the most to us), there were funny parts (Liz singing Christian rock songs while drunk and walking down Coastal Highway), there were normal parts (every day spent on the beach just chilling with friends), there were annoying parts (belligerent drunks), there were sad parts (friendships ending), and there were bad parts (worrying about a friend of a friend almost dying on our bathroom floor). But put it all together and I wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't even change hooking up with Nick. I'll take it all and still wish I had it to do over again.


Reading: Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
Reading this on the beach is fun. It's an amazing book and I'm not just saying that because I am a supporter of Barack Obama. It is just a great story and is very well-written.

Listening: CNN on in the background
I really need to get back into my real life, which includes following the news obessively.