…my parents are so resistant to my spring break plans?
I think I am an easy child. I get good grades, work hard, and sustain myself. I haven’t totaled a car or landed myself in a hospital from eating too much ramen, and I always make sure to bring my white claw cans to the grocery store bottle return to make back 25 cents.
So why can’t I have a Keg in the living room?
I could have gone to the beach for spring break, soaked up the sun and the surf and sipped daiquiris while breathing the salty air. I could have gone swimming and clubbing and lived wild and free like a college kid is supposed to. Yet I chose to go home at the behest of my mother who ‘missed me’ and ‘needed help cleaning the basement.’
I figured I could make it the best of both worlds. I would set up a beach chair next to the couch, throw some sand under the dining room table, and blend myself up some smoothies in the kitchen. I would soak up the natural rays from my great-grandmother’s heirloom lamp, and take a dip in the same bathtub we wash my dog in.
I got away with it at first. I would be on island time during the day and play the dutiful daughter when my parents got home from work. My Dad would make a comment about how the house smelled like sun bum, my Mom would wonder how sand got into the carpet and I would gaslight the way only a film major can. Sand in the house? That doesn’t make any sense. Your brains must be disintegrating!
On the last day of break I was exhausted from the rave and ready to call it quits, but not before I completed my master work. I was going to pull off the classiest solo keg stand my town has ever seen. I put on my Sunday best, a coconut bra, and a helmet (I’m not an animal.) I raised myself above the spout, prepared mentally for the fame that was inevitably going to consume my life post-stand. And just as I was about to go in for the kill, my mother walked in.
‘Appalling, disgusting, strange…’ were some of the words my parents used to describe my actions. If I had my say it would have been: ‘heroic, inspirational, revolutionary’ but whatever that’s not my call.
Now I am grounded.
No surf or sand or warm beer in the living room. My parents even lied to my school and said I have covid so I can serve out the rest of my punishment at home. I am a good kid. I promise. I have been a better kid since the incident, but that doesn’t mean I won’t occasionally remember my moment of glory, the rush of freedom and the wind in my hair as I approached the shores of Valhalla.
Until Next Spring,
Sarah Borsari