Senior Spring Break?
An editorial reflection
You've got to be crazy to travel to the tropics of Texas in the month of March. That's the time of year that as many as 130,000 screaming, drumming, thumping and bumping pre-adult college students hit the beaches of South Padre Island and create absolute terror for anyone and everyone over 30 years of age.
Who would want to fight the long lines of traffic across the Port Isabel Causeway - the 2 mile bridge that connects the island with the mainland - and find yourself stuck in a line of standstill traffic with booming sound systems rattle your brain from the thousands of cars full of young people that surround you?
Can you imagine the wait at local restaurants as thousands of kids crowd around you waiting for their number to be called? And the beaches are so full of wild and crazy college kids that you're likely to see almost anything - whether you want to or not!
The distance that divides college thinking and demeanor from that of the average retiree or Winter Texan is astounding. For most of us "over-the-hill" gang, it's Sinatra or Presley, Mathis or Iglesias (senior, thank you - not junior). To "them" it's Seether or Eminem; SR-71 or Fat Joe. Instead of champagne or cocktails, it's beer busts or tequila parties.
For us: Liz Claiborne and Gucci and Land's End. For them: Billabong and skimpy thongs and things that truly go bump in the night.
Whew! Can you say generation gap?
Then why are so many Winter Texans finding themselves reluctant to go back home before the first week of March Madness happens on the island? What about the 73-year old grandmother from Toronto that stopped by a beach shop recently because she was listening to the island's Alternative Rock radio station that was broadcasting live and offering a free t-shirt to the first listener who claimed the prize in person. (She won the t-shirt).
Then there was the 78 year old Oregon senior who was instructing a rather large group of Spring Breakers on the proper kiteboarding form while standing in the brisk breeze of the bayside beach.
On a rather gray afternoon in mid-March, I spied a group of seniors playing golf with a group of obviously young college kids. Where is that generation gap? Stopping by the local Schlitterbahn Restaurant & Club one evening, I saw an old codger sitting at the bar telling jokes to a small group of Indiana University students, who were rolling at the punch lines.
It took me a few days to figure it all out. In many, many ways the old saying is true, "age is a state of mind." For a few Winter Texans, at least, Spring Break this year (as most years I'm told) isn't the terrible, dreaded generation clash that one would expect. For some, it's a time to remember and experience the joys of their own youth once again. Not only to remember what it was like, but to taste it again, through the senses, of course, of a much more mature mind and spirit.
Except for the old man from Michigan I saw skateboarding down Main Street holding on to the rear fender of a Humvee full of college kids from Texas A&M.
If you're as old as you feel, this guy must have been thirteen again.
Figure it out for yourself. I'm still trying.
