Spring Break is all about money. Your kids, credit cards in hand, are being exploited by tourist development councils all over the country. But I don't know about other towns. I just know about Panama City Beach, FL. That is the place I don't usually visit because of distance, but certainly NEVER during Spring Break. It's only about a 20 mile drive over a bridge.
Your children this year were among the craziest of drivers, driving US Highway 231, the road most of them from the southeast and northeast use. Driving this normally treacherous road, they zigged and zagged with youthful abandon, and watching them weave was heart stopping. We cringed to watch them hoping they would not harm us. Two vehicles following closely nearly sideswiped me as I was entering a left turn lane at a light. No sheriff or FHP in sight. I wasn't supposed to die that day is all I can say.
The Tourist Development Council spent millions of dollars on advertising via internet, newspapers, school newspapers, and stations like MTV (who was here this year), luring your children to come here to grow up fast in an alcoholic haze. As long as they spend their (your) dollars here within the county, it's all fine and dandy.
While here, your sons and daughters will begin drinking upon opening their eyes in the morning, because if your little angels are underage, there is sure to be an older upper classman enabling and providing for them. They will drive while drunk. They will get pregnant and may not even know who they were with because they were unconscious from alcohol or drugs. Experimentation is part of the fun. They will end up in hospitals because they were drunk, drugged or both and climb on balconies and hotel roofs and take nosedives to the cement below. If they are fortunate, they will escape with serious injuries. While driving drunk, they will hit pedestrians and kill or injure them. They will be so shitfaced drunk they will defecate, urinate and vomit wherever they must. This year over a thousand trashcans were used because the amount of trash was so tremendous and the numbers had to be increased.
They will trash hotel and motel rooms. They will get into drunken brawls. They will get STDs from unprotected sex. They will end up in jail for drunk and disorderly and add your money to the tills of law enforcement and the legal system.
They will have accidents in their vehicles or someone else's. I hope you are spared their death.
They will have accidents because they were in a party mood and not paying attention and that will kill others. Several lives were lost this year because of hit/runs.
Your virtuous sons and daughters will come home deflowered in more than one way. And maybe they will come home drug addicts. Spring Break is about experimentation. Sex, drugs and rock and roll. Sound familiar? It's just more intense now.
I hope this one post goes viral. I pray that you have the wisdom and the strength to say "no" to your children when they desperately want to join their friends on Spring Break anywhere in the world.
They are out of control, on purpose. It's not just sowing wild oats, which they will do anyway - but the concept of young people being persuaded to come to these spring break oases, is just about the money they will spend. No one here gives a hoot for your kid's safety. Certainly not
the people in charge of publicity.
We have condos and motel/hotel rooms staying empty because of the economy. The condos were overbuilt; the hospitality industry needs bodies to fill rooms. Your credit cards in the hands of your young adult children binge drinking cases and kegs of beer for a week or two mean the world to "us". If your children were hedgehogs with credit cards, they would be just as important to us too.
Panama City Beach has beautiful beaches, which you cannot see for the condos and hotel complexes. True - our water is beautiful and warm (well, maybe not this year), and the sand is fine, white and soft. But do you think your children would be interested in coming to Spring Break if this happened to be a dry county? A dry city?
Get real.
I wish the TDC would begin advertising heavily for families. Panama City Beach and surrounding areas are deep south. By that I mean that we haven't gone Miami, though there are some here who would drive us to that transformation.
We used to be called the Redneck Riviera. PCB is a short drive for the tri-staters to enjoy the sun and the Gulf of Mexico. The mom and pop motels have disappeared and replaced by condos which replaced the sand dunes; a crime against nature which makes it dangerous during hurricanes because the protection of the dunes is gone. You can barely see the water between the canyon walls of condos. That being said, there is plenty of opportunity to bring the family together here, to enjoy the sun, the Gulf and touristy things to do.
But don't let your kids loose in unfamiliar territory. They are a danger to themselves and to us.
They have lost their inhibitions. They are NOT going to behave like ladies or gentlemen. They are going to an orgy of thousands and they want to get to their destination as fast as possible so they can join it.
As a parent of a man who participated locally in spring break because of a part-time job, I can tell you that it's dangerous here for your kids. If you must send them off to spring break, why don't you take a vacation, too and come with them, or at the very least, keep the car keys. Maybe you can be the designated driver! Or maybe you could insist that they earn their own money for the trip. It's so expensive, they may not be able to save that much.
They'll hate you.
I'd rather have my kids hate me for a long time than to come here to the orgy on the beach.
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