We all remember those days back in our youth when, upon returning to school in the fall, we were told to write essays titled “What I Did On My Summer Vacation.” A summary of exactly that would follow, possibly with some life lessons thrown in for good measure. For example: “This summer, I went out to Crater Lake in Oregon with my family. It was a lot of fun, and I learned never to hop over a fence with nothing but six inches of gravel standing between you and a thousand feet of air with which to contemplate your utter stupidity on the way down.” True story, although don't worry – I was not the one to hop over the fence.
But I digress – the reason I bring this up is because my sometimes bosses at The Insider decided it would be a good idea to riff off this prompt and have me write about what I did on my winter vacation. Looking to take a break from the mountain of reading I already have as homework, I took them up on their offer. So, let's see, what did I do on my winter break?
To be honest, it got off to somewhat of an inauspicious start, in that I was stuck at BC (Boston College) the first night. My last final was over at 11 in the morning, and my mom was supposed to drive down to pick me up shortly thereafter. However, bad luck intervened in the form of a storm, and my mom decided to play it safe and pick me up the next day. Consequently, I also missed out on my high school's holiday concert, which happened to be my brother's last high school concert ever.
Once I did manage to get home, I made plans to meet up with a friend of mine at my high school's alumni day. That, too, went down the drain when our school district got an early release halfway through the day.
Between catching up on Christmas movies and simply enjoying not having to do anything, the first week went by rather uneventfully. That is, if you discount the madness that was my brothers' and my attempt at making a movie to give to our parents as a last-minute Christmas present. When I say last-minute, I mean we decided the Sunday before Christmas to do it. We had high hopes of finishing the project in time for Christmas, but the running time ballooned to somewhere in the neighborhood of 27 and a half minutes, which was compounded by the fact that we had to switch editing software after a day of editing.
It should come as no surprise, then, that it was not ready for Christmas, much to our dismay.
Christmas itself was a lot of fun, even though the majority of what I got was clothes and toiletries. My brothers and I used most of our free time that afternoon to just about finish the movie – which worked out well because I wouldn't be home again for another week.
We left the next day to go to my grandparents in upstate New York. Usually, my grandmother makes some of her “famous” spaghetti for us the first night we're there. This time, however, she held off, citing the fact that the last time she did that (at Thanksgiving), our car broke down in Hillsboro and she was stuck with tons of spaghetti and 40 meatballs.
While in New York for that weekend, I took the time to read the first third of the assigned reading for my honors class. Christmas there was good as always, as we got to see pretty much the whole family again. Unfortunately, we had to go back a little earlier than originally planned so that I could get down to BC on Monday morning at 7:30.
“Why on earth did he need to be back at school so early, four days after Christmas?” you might be asking yourself. It's actually a pretty good reason – I was picked to be one of 39 people from the marching band to go down and play at our bowl game in Nashville on New Year's Eve.
While getting up at 4:30 a.m. to make the trip was definitely not much fun (and for that matter, neither was losing the bowl game in near-freezing temperatures), the trip itself was a blast. The fact that it was free definitely didn't hurt, either.
Between walking the streets of Nashville and hearing live music come out of every restaurant/bar/etc, and being in awe of the largest hotel in the U.S. outside of Vegas (the Opryland Resort), it was worth every minute. Admittedly, it was a bit strange to not be spending New Year's at home for the first time, but hey, there's a first time for everything.
I got back home on New Year's Day, and spent the next day *attempting* to take care of my egg baby. But you probably already read about that, so I won't get into it. My brothers and I finished our movie, and finally gave it to our parents, who greatly enjoyed it.
The next week, between attempting to do more of my reading for honors (which, admittedly, did not end up getting as done as I wanted) and nothing at all, I had lunch with a close friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a while, and had another close friend over for dinner. My grandparents came over for the weekend to watch my middle brother play basketball in his rec league (they picked a good game to come to, seeing as how he outscored the entire other team), so it was good to visit with them again.
By this point, the allure of BC was starting to call me back. It wasn't that I didn't like being at home, although some days I did feel bored, having nothing to do but sit on the couch and play Madden 09 and Mario Kart on my brother's Wii. It's a sure sign that you need some kind of change of scenery or situation when you feel guilty about being unproductive, even though you're supposed to be.
So, overall, it was bittersweet when I finally had to leave for school the day before classes started, made even worse by the sudden news the previous day of my former AP English/CCD teacher's death. In a weird twist of fate, it happens that this was the same teacher who I had referenced in the first two sentences of the egg baby article.
Needless to say, I was not in the best of moods to be going back to school. So, my winter break, although bookended by frustration and sadness, was a good one.
As for life lessons, though – I'll have to get back to you on that one.
