My Early Retirement

My parents and I have a long standing deal. Essentially, it goes like this: if you want to escape Michigan weather for springbreak, you can come with us and we’ll pay for it. If you want to go with your friends, you’re on your own, sugartits. If you read this blog, you know I have a weird thing about money. I’m saving my nest egg for a rainy day or a Chinese orpahn or my first wedding. So, every year I go on Springbreak with Cliff. 

Cliff is a professional springbreak attendee. He knows where the best places are, which way the sun will rise and cast its exact shadow onto a particular balcony which therefore determines if a particular room is worthy of our visit, where the best food is according to tripadvisor.com, and he knows what each kid likes to do, which allows him to cater the vacation to make it appealing. Examples? He knows that David and I can’t sit still for too long, so he took us to Costa Rica last year, where David could exercise his mind playing a game of “I Speak Spanish” with the natives and I could run on the beach everyday (because if I don’t run, I get really crabby really fast). He knows Jake prefers to sit on the beach and push back a drink, so last year he took Jake to Mexico, where he could be a legal drinker (so my parents are therefore not guilty of supplying a minor) and turn a nice shade of my favorite color, pink.

Since I’ve turned 18, I’ve always had friends asking me to go on Springbreak with them. The stereotypical SENIOR SPRINGBREAK trip to Panama was my first chance, but my liver is a last-place-in-the-minor-league-draft liver compared to my friends and to be completely honest, it wasn’t even a realistic option because my parents were much too strict to allow their daughter to driver to Florida with her friends for seven days of drunken debauchery while I was still in high school. A choice that made me pout for a few days in the twelfth grade, however, my own kids don’t have a shot in hell of going on Senior Springbreak. Yeah kids, if you ever read this: No. Effin. Way. I know what goes on there. Go study for your ACTs or something. Don’t even bother asking.

Back on topic though. So this year, my Mom got in on the action and the whole family (sans David) is doing some time in Coco Beach, Florida. Where the average resident is at least 65 and the business people target this key audience by only providing merchandise that an old person losing their vision would deem attractive. My other argument for them losing their vision is that I’ve walked with them on the beach and they must be nearly blind to believe that bikinis on the beach at 80 is a good thing. I mean, I’m 21 and I haven’t even rocked my bikini yet! There’s also a Coco Beach High School, which seems kind of a like a waste of resources. I mean, the only kids attending that school have got to be grandchildren sent to live with their grandparents for reasons like misbehaving. A Juvenile Detention Center would likely be an equal substitute. 

Beyond that, we have the issue that Flood Family vacations are a little like Boot Camp. Let me give you a sample dialogue:

Ann: Maggie! It’s 8:15! Want to get up?

Maggie: NOOOOOOOOOO

Ann: Let’s go for a walk!

Maggie: NOOOOOOOOO

Ann: Are you sure?! 

Maggie: STOP TALKING TO ME! I’LL NEVER FALL ASLEEP NOW!

Ann: Well, since you’re up, let’s go for a walk! 

I love exercise. I really do. Mostly because I love eating and I depend on the notion that the more I work out, the more I can eat. But when Ann Flood says walk, watch out, because Ann Flood means WALK. I walked ten miles my first day here! The next day I only did six and I felt guilty! What kind of crock is this where I go on Springbreak and I feel guilty for “only” going six miles? My friends are drunk on a beach and I’m literally doing my first work out of the day while they’re just stumbling in from their night!

That said, Coco beach is wonderful because it’s quiet. It lets you think. It’s no shocker to anyone that I’m a little, um, blurry, on what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. As in, I have no clue and whoever told me that someday I would just “know” seriously owes me money or a strong drink, or at the very least a little direction because I’m completely lost. But, since I’ve been done here, I’ve remembered why I chose my major in the first place and what kind of a job I really, really wanted when I chose that particular major. But that’s another blog post, I suppose. I will say this, however: I have seen more couples in their eighties holding hands on this beach than I ever have in my entire life. I mean, that says something right? I have no idea what these people chose to do with their lives or if they were successful or if they made all the right choices at all the right times, but here, on the beach, they’re all equally wrinkly, dressed in bright, horrid outfits that I really thought society did away with prior to my birth in the 80s, and they all seem pretty happy. 

So, I guess that will be my new goal: I want to be saggy and wrinkly and happily in love, strolling on a beach in Florida when I’m 85 and be happy because I’m with the person I adore. Please note that I left out the horrible clothes. I really hope even when I’m losing my memory I can tell that the shade of orange that burns your eyes when you look directly at it is not a shade that looks good on me.