Spring Break!

The SJG on Spring Break

Spring Break.  Woo-hoo!  Party-party!  Four years of college, and for three of those four years, the SJG has no memory of Spring Break, no memory of anything fun.  All I remember is relief.  Thank God, Winter Quarter was over and I got ten days to recover.  What did I do during my Spring Break?  I'm sure I slept in, and if I had a part-time job, I worked, and that was that. The only Spring Break I did anything great, however, was in 1978, when I lived in England.  I was an exchange student at the University of Sussex.  They kicked us out of housing and said, "Cheerio."  So the Americans went off on adventures, and the resentful Brits went home to their mums and hated us a little more when we returned.  That Spring Break, I took off traveling by myself, a bold move for the SJG.  I stayed with a family in Cambridge.  I took a train to Edinburgh, where my American friends were supposed to meet me at a scary youth hostel.  They didn't show up, so I spent one spooky night there, then called up the nice lady I'd met on the train, who'd invited me to stay with her family "in case you don't like the Hostel, dear."  I met English friends in the Lake District.  They camped.  I stayed in a historic B&B.  (The SJG stopped camping after the Yosemite Bear Incident of 1975.) I stayed with my flatmate in Oxford.  My brother John met me in London and we stayed with a British Aunty Mame.  It snowed in April.  We threw snowballs at each other.  He sat me down and said, "Guess who's gay?" Today, the college boy comes home for his Spring Break.  Chances are, he'll spend most of it recovering from another difficult quarter.  He'll veg out on the sofa, watch a lot of basketball, see a few friends, then go back and do it all again.  Spring Break 2012. Woo-hoo! Spring Break, 1978.  Best Spring Break Ever.  Something worth remembering.  So what if all the others are a big blur?  It was the only one that really counted.