Spring Break

Oh, Spring Break. I hear people talking all the time about “what they’re going to do”, and usually it involves something that sounds fun and exciting. However, when they direct the question at me, “Bonnyjean, what are you doing over Spring Break?” I just want to answer, “Your mom.”

Anyway, here's my Spring Break story.

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3. . .

2. . . . 

1½. . . . . . .

1 ¼. . . . . . . . . .

1. . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . 

JUMP!

Falling through the air is an interesting sensation, and for me, it was also confusing. At the point where my body had expected to hit something, the air was still rushing up through my hair. Mentally and logically I knew that I was falling from pretty high up, however preparing my body for something it has no experience with is. . . well, interesting. Right--all right--so where was I? Fine. I’ll tell you. I was hanging out at Malibu Creek with my Peruvian Pal, Pamela, and her boyfriend and his buddies. For one, I was angry at how I was being ogled by the male population swimming around in the contaminated waters (though I'm not sure which was more contaminated--the men, or the murky water). For two, (though I was trying my best to remain unaffected) the chauvinism from Pamela's boyfriend's buddies was sickening. And the fact that one of the guys kept insisting that I needed help over every fallen tree and muddy incline and moldy, stagnant puddle made me want to punch somebody in the face. Did it really look like I needed help? I know how to hike, darnit! And then Pamela’s girlish and attractive complaints in her dainty “slightly-scared” voice was grating on my nerves so completely that I thought I might break someone’s neck. (I love Pamela to death, but she’s never been camping, and she’s not so fond of bugs, and at the time I had no remorse for her since she'd been the one to rope me in to tagging along. I found out later it was because the guys just wanted more girls along on the trip. . . ). So, as you can probably guess, the way the sun dappled the ground around us as it broke through the leaves didn’t do much to alleviate my mood, and the nostalgic crunch of dirt, branches and dead vegetation under our collective feet only chorused my annoyance. I was rather preoccupied with the plastic bags poking out of random sections of vegetation we passed along the way, and the beer cans glittering ominously in the dappled sunlight, and making sure nobody was sneaking a peek at my behind whenever I climbed up over anything in our path. The only thing that had given me satisfaction during the trek had been the prospect of Chauvinist 1's growing farmers’ tan. That thought curled up the edges of my lips--but only slightly. When we finally reached 'The Watering Hole' or whatever they called it, I found myself jumping to my own defense when one of the guys accused me of being too girly and cowardly to jump off the rock with the rest of them. It was about 35 feet--not so terrible, right? As I climbed up I noticed several of the guys hung back to watch, proclaiming to have already jumped on previous trips, or somesuch excuse. Only Chauvinist 1 and his buddy, He-Man the Magnificent, led the zig-zagging way up the hunk of jutting rock.

I’m happy to say that I had the "cahones" (as they put it) to jump, though not so happy that I lacked the wherewithal to keep my legs all the way closed upon impact. My bum hurt for a good long while after that. One could say that to jump in the first place was a stupid thing to do, however, I think we were all off our rockers to even wade in the questionable water. I was actually surprised I didn't find any dirty diapers floating around somewhere.