This band rocks

A band on men tissues

Oops

 

Abandonment issues

Damn spacing

 

I love my parents.

 

They just called me.

The background filled with car horns and the types of screams that only come from deferred adulthood.

 

In the last six months both of my parents have officially become orphans.

Their respective mothers, each with exceptional timing their whole lives, died within four months of each other. 

Me?

I’m fine, better than fine.  I’m grown up.  Responsible for my life.

My little brother is a doctor now.

There is no one left for them to take care of.

 

So they left.

 

My dad has been prepping for years.

A camper.

Navigation system

His skin, like chestnut, a deep brown hue that you can only get by spending the last eight summers sitting by the pool, retired, waiting for your wife

Hoping not to die before she joins you.

Like a sirens song, or the monarchs returning to Mexico,

They went to Florida.

 

Old friends now old.

speak of their ailments

and great times fit in between responsibilities and solid plans for the future.

 

Random calls would come in from the road on their cell phones..

“I can’t talk right now honey, I have to read the map for your father.”

“but” I said, “the navigation system…?” the phone was dead.

 

On to New Orleans, where youth almost caught them.

They fled the town as the parades of Mardi Gras invaded.

Down along the gulf coast they rambled

Till they found a jewel on southern tip of America.

 

Quiet and peaceful.

New empty beaches to explore and golf friends to make.

A couple from Washington State offered them the condo they had rented for all of March.

An undisclosed family tragedy drew them back to the pacific north west.

Take it at a discount.

 

Not one to pass the town of discount, they stayed an extra two weeks on this southern fatherly island.

 

The phone call came in today.

 

The place that was once so peaceful, not a person on the beach, has been transformed.

Youth has caught them.

“They’re like locusts”

 

They tried to explain to the locusts that it is called patio furniture, not pool furniture.

That if you puke on the ground, you should clean it up

That the plastic owl is there for a reason

That fighting never solves anything

That they are arresting people for open containers or glass on the beach.

They tried to explain that the free shuttle will take you to the other side of the island.

They told them that the big club was close enough to walk to

They tried to explain all this to me once

But what was I? Homeless?  Take a bus! 

It’s funny how we repeat the same actions over and over in life and expect different results.

 

But that is not to say they aren’t having fun.

The phone call would have been much more interesting if my father’s British accent was thicker…and if he used the word “extraordinary”. 

But the sentiment was there.

 

They are on safari.

This strange foreign tribe called “spring breakers” have invaded their Island of South Padre.

And they love it.

 

“I don’t like Full Throttle, or Red Bull.  It was free from the stand they put up in front of our condo and I don’t like it.” 

“did you try it with vodka?”

 

She hadn’t.  I explained to her that everything that she didn’t like about the festival of spring break could be solved by applying enough vodka.

She didn’t like that the army was recruiting on the beach, forgetting that the alternative is the time honored tradition of “the draft”.

She loved that Trojan had its own booth.

 

He loved that all of them, no matter how fat, wore a bikini.

He loved that the catapult bungee was set up in front of the condo.

He said that 7 out of 10 of the girls got at least a 7.

He thinks the $15 cover charge is a rip off…

There was a fight between two of them at the pool, drunk at 2 pm.

He couldn’t imagine how, when he dies, heaven will measure up.

He can’t imagine how you can pay for rims or tattoos with out selling

drugs.

It’s reassuring.

It’d be scary if he didn’t say thing like that.

 

It’s hard for my parents to walk down the beach

They have to step over the inhibitions of so many young girls.

But there they are.  They are staying for another week.

 

In the morning my mom plays golf.

In the afternoon they lounge by the pool with 40 kids getting wasted.

At night they walk the strip, counting the number of arrests.

 

As they told me all this, the sentences were punctuated honks and yells.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

and my parents echoed back….

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

 

I am so lucky to have such cool parents…and I mean that. 

They are the youngest people I know.

 

If I’m this jealous when my parents go on spring break,

I can’t imagine what I’ll feel when my kids go.