The Harvard Hooligans

American Dream

Senior spring break is the American “rite of passage” from boyhood into manhood.  Sadly, this has replaced the more cost-effective tradition of venturing into the woods and bringing back the soul of a squirrel.

Instead of going alone into the woods, we now go with a group of “friends” to more distant and dangerous locations (as far as possible from adult and legal supervision).  If you survive the poisonous levels of alcohol, hoards of MTV-watching morons, and tainted “all-you-can-eat” buffets, you’ll be a Man, my son.

The joy of senior spring break begins far before you squeeze into the cheapest seats on a plane for the six-hour flight.  It begins when someone you don’t like gets drunk months in advance and says, “Let’s go on spring break together!” Because you don’t want to feel like an inadequate American, you then suggest one of the following destinations: Bahamas, Mexico, Aruba.

Thus the planning stage begins. This stage generally kills off all the lesser spirits who have not the courage of a thousand warriors.

I have done more research on spring break than on my economic thesis.  My research assistant, Hillbilly Hooligan, worked at Morgan Stanley last summer and is able to “run the numbers” using Excel to determine whether the cost of food, drink, and shelter are beyond the reaches of a college budget.  It is invariably too expensive.

Our first spring break idea involved going to Harbor Island in the Bahamas.  But this became passé when someone suggested that we voyage to the beaches of Nicaragua. “Ragua” sounded tremendously appealing from Hillbilly’s financial analysis-side until our location researcher, Hunchback, unearthed documents on the CIA’s website revealing Nicaragua had recently experienced a spike in kidnapped and murdered tourists.  This of course scared Housewife Hooligan away.

After a few days of people talking about committing group-suicide and thereby going to a “real exotic location,” we have begun researching other possibilities.

Group decision-making is so much fun.