FENECH | Spring break? Bah!

Issue date: 3/4/09

By Anthony Fenech

Every now and then, someone will drop a line that leaves you absolutely and positively speechless.

It's the kind of line that hits like a perfect storm of confusion and comedy - an eyebrow-raising, jaw-dropping comment that is most often responded to with a crooked look or an unsure chuckle.

"Are they trying to be funny?" you wonder. "Or did they really say that?"

So here's a fair warning: In the next paragraph I am that person, saying four words that may or may not permanently give me the reputation as the most uncool person on campus. I realize this. Just save the looks, all right?

I despise spring break.

Call me a loser, call me lifeless or call me just plain stupid. Tell me that I'm the lamest thing this side of the game. Because it's true - I just don't like spring break and never have.

I am Ebenezer Scrooge, pent up miserably in a beach-side condo as the air conditioning runs, jealously ignoring the annual college holiday. It's not the Ghost of Christmas Past that visits me regularly in March; it's the Ghost of Spring Breaks Past.

The tale begins in a classroom years ago with a daydreaming kid, a student planner and a pen. It was my junior year of high school and I had grown tired of hearing about the same giddy anticipation from the same kids who went to the same warm places and had the same fun that I didn't.

Sitting in class, I flipped from page to page and from number to number, counting down the days until my senior spring break the next year. The next fall, I picked up where I left off and finished before lunch time on the first day of school.

"CANCUN," my planner read in big, block letters under the date of March 27.

Two months later, both planner and spring break dreams were in the trash - don't ask - replaced by a permanent scar that burns every time the words 'spring' and 'break' accompany each other.

So have fun in Miami, Panama City and Cancun. Have fun in the heat, on the beaches and in the water. Laugh at your stories and bask in your tans. I'd rather be here.

I'd rather be here, waking up to a few inches of snow on the ground, having the blistering wind kiss my face and, in general, having a miserable week filled with envy from afar.

Besides, how can you appreciate the beautiful 55-degree Michigan weather when you were lounging in the '80s a couple of weeks before?

So to you, The Ghost of Spring Breaks Present, the beer-bonging, MTV-hawking and sun-bathing spring breaker, who enjoys the weeklong festival of happiness that has ever eluded me, I have one thing to say:

Bah, humbug!

Spring break, you have and always will be my least favorite holiday.

That is, until I meet the Ghost of Spring Breaks Yet to Come.