Everybody Goes To Florida.

When Spring Break rolled around during my junior year, Bonnie and I wanted to go somewhere and do something really cool.

“Let’s to South Beach!” she suggested – a hub for college kids seeking the kind of drinking extravagance only Miami in March can provide.

I didn’t know anything about Florida. “If we’re going somewhere warm, let’s go to Los Angeles!” I said. Obviously I didn’t know anything about Los Angeles either. I dreamed of wandering on Venice Beach like Jim Morrison, spouting poetry and dragging my toes through the sand. I had no idea that the Pacific Ocean was cold, and I sure didn’t know about the riff raff at Venice Beach.

We brainstormed ideas, imagining the entire world as a Spring Break option, until we finally decided to discuss our plans with our parents.

“How are you going to pay for this trip?” my parents asked me.

“Well I was hoping you would pay,” I said. I’d made some money at Kennywood and I got an allowance for college expenditures, but I didn’t have any savings.

After much discussion, my parents suggested that we consider going somewhere slightly less exotic. If we did, they said, they would help with costs. Bonnie’s parents said about the same thing. So we regrouped.

“Everybody goes to Florida for Spring Break,” Bonnie said. “We should go somewhere where nobody else goes.”

“I guess we could go to Delaware,” I said, trying to pick a place I’d never seen that wouldn’t be crowded.

“Delaware?!” Bonnie scoffed. Then she brightened. “Hey! My brother lives in Chicago! And he’s the coolest person in the whole world! They have tons of bars and restaurants and nightclubs that stay open all night long! Let’s go to Chicago!”

I didn’t know Bonnie’s brother, but she’d always said good things about him. Best of all, he was gay – so I didn’t have to worry about him ogling me. The drinking age in Illinois was 21, so we had to finagle a way around that. But otherwise, the bright lights and big city were suddenly calling me.

In 1985, while all the other college students flew south, Bonnie and I flew north for Spring Break.

And it was cold. It was early March in Chicago – bitterly, brutally cold. The wind blew so hard, we literally helped an old woman cross the street. She was standing on the curb, hanging onto a lamp post, unable to step down for fear of having her 98-pound self blown over by the gusting wind.

She could not have crossed the street without us.

But we were helpful and happy and young and eager and excited and thrilled to be somewhere – anywhere – other than our little campus in Ohio.

I remember going to one bar at 3 a.m. – after the bar where we’d been drinking had closed – and it was like being transported into a movie. Lights and colors and sweaty dancers and deafening music filled the warehouse … and we wandered into the crowd, bouncing around but tired. When we wandered outside, it felt like we were in a different universe.

Chicago was different.

Little did we know what a huge effect our Spring Break would have on our psyches.

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