It's Spring Break: Do You Know Where Your Kids Are This Week?

It's hard to avoid the media coverage of raucous revelry on beaches from Florida to California, in resort towns from Padre Island to Myrtle Beach, as students celebrate the end of exams and the beginning of the next and last period of concentrated effort for the 2023-24 college year. For some young people it's the last blowout until graduation; for others it's the break before completing one academic year and starting another.

While some will be spending the semester holiday interviewing for internships and going to job fairs and others will be grinding away in the library preparing for final exams or completing overdue papers and coursework, many students will take advantage of the time off to pile into someone's car and head for the nearest patch of sun-kissed sand. They'll congregate with old friends, flirt hopefully with new ones, break out the beer kegs, raise the volleyball nets, and hang out on the boardwalk.

By the time the sun is high in the sky they'll plunge into the waves and strike out for deeper waters, climb aboard an already overloaded float or an equally crowded party boat. Showing off for each other, they'll be diving off slime-slick rocks, rickety piers, and flying bridges, and if they're lucky, they'll suffer nothing worse than a sunburn. At night they'll crowd the plazas and stroll along the waterfront, sometimes breaking into song or supplying the beats for an impromptu drum solo or rap concert. If an attractive person smiles or flirts, they'll probably respond: there's plenty of romance in the air, after all.

But sometimes the mood of the crowd shifts and a carefree evening turns ugly, fueled by alcohol or drugs, a conflagration between locals and visitors, tension between town and gown. Later, no one can remember how it started, but often it ends at the police station or a night in jail, and when your phone rings and you hear the story you're torn between relief (they're alive!), anger (how could they have been that stupid and irresponsible?); and guilt (you knew you shouldn't have let them go.)

Even though you know a night in jail isn't the worst thing that could happen, you still call a friend who's a lawyer or a bail bondsman whose number your embarrassed, apologetic kid reads off the payphone in the pokey and get someone to come to his rescue. Or maybe you don't. You let him (it's usually a him) spend the night surrounded by drunks, crooks, a thug or two and people who stare at him threateningly. He doesn't sleep; mostly he promises himself he'll never end up in this situation again. And if he learns his lesson, he won't.

He'll make an appearance in court, and unless someone was injured in the fracas or he wises off to the judge or the bailiff or there are conflicting accounts of what happened, he'll probably get off with a fine and a warning. A client of mine who fronted his 20-year-old son the fine and other court costs, which amounted to close to a thousand dollars, cancelled the young man's plans to spend the summer semester abroad; "He hasn't shown us that he's mature enough to handle ten days in Florida, which is just two states away," he said. "He can live at home and take classes at the university here, Besides, he's got some community service to do at an inner-city program my wife and I support. That'll pay me back that thousand dollars, and it might even make him realize how lucky he is by comparison."

Of course, not every spring break story ends this way. For many older adults, their spring break memories are as golden as their lithe, strong, sun-kissed bodies were way back when, and while they tuck some extra cash in their kids' wallets or hand over their gas cards, a wave of nostalgia sweeps over them as warm as the sand that tickled their bare feet once upon a time.