I’ve been led to believe Spring Break is supposed to be the greatest time of my life as a college student. I have been so inundated by these messages that partying hard is an automatic association to Spring Break. When I hear “Spring Break,” the first thing I think of is a crowded beach with more alcohol than ocean.

According to Selena Gomez and other unworthy-of-mentioning former Disney Channel stars, “Spring Break” is when you do crazy stuff without the real possibility of consequences in the end and get away with it because the law does not apply to college kids just having some Spring Break fun.

For most kids, Spring Break does not involve strong-arm robbery, unless you’re into that kind of thing. But, often it involves a beach and alcohol. Many go to a country, like Mexico, where the drinking age is 18. Some don’t. Let’s be honest, it doesn’t make much of a difference anyway.

I’m supposed to find any free space on sand south of the Mason-Dixon Line and act like a rotisserie chicken on a blanket. If you’re lucky, you have a pool at your motel and can jump from the third deck into it. The point is, Spring Break is supposed to be a fun and reckless. If you don’t have your version of James Franco deep-throating a loaded gun, was it really Spring Break?

You’ve only lived on Spring Break if you have pictures to Instagram for the next three weeks, and then five months later can say “take me back to spring break.” Even if it’s just you sitting on a crowded beach in a bathing suit, you need those 250 likes to feel like it was worth it.

What I did for Spring Break was the complete opposite. There was a lack of anybody in bathing suits. In fact, a snowstorm hit the Northeast and instead of clear blue waters, I was trapped in the house by frozen death water. That’s how I refer to snow.

After hours of digging myself a grave, I finally finished. But just in case the frozen death water attacked again, I began shoveling my way out of the house. In fact, I not only shoveled my house and driveway, but my elderly neighbor’s home, too. She is in her late 80s, lives on a hill and has a wheelchair. None of those are true, but hopefully people will be impressed with that. She was elderly, though, and she still is.

Other than that, I did not do much during my Spring Break. Oh wait, something monumental happened. I got sass at a Marshalls. I needed to buy a belt because I forgot all my belts at school. I walked in and said to someone who worked there, “Hi, where can I find the belts?” Granted, I probably should have been holding my pants up, but I needed a belt to do that.

The lady at the front said, “I don’t know,” and stopped talking to me. Most non-crazy people, if they worked at a store, would tell the customer where the product is located in the store. If they did not know, they would usually find somebody who does. I worked at Sports Authority last summer. I’m not saying I’m the reason they closed nationwide, but I probably was. When I wasn’t aware of the general location of an item — which was most of the time — I asked people who actually cared.

So, as we can see, there are two types of Spring Breaks. You can have the “I’m surrounded by hordes of people while I’m 90 percent drunk and 10 percent clothed,” or you can have the “I’m surrounded by hordes of snow while I’m 90 percent clothed and 10 percent drunk.”

Josh Feinblatt is a sophomore television, radio, film major. He didn’t go anywhere fun on Spring Break because he was writing this column and definitely putting a lot of work into it. He can be reached at an international number because he’s going to Mexico this week while the beaches are clearing out, on Twitter @joshfeinblatt or by email at jfeinbla@syr.edu.

Published on March 19, 2017 at 8:16 pm