Whatever Happened To Bonfires on the Beach?

I’m not so old that I don’t remember having fun in wacky ways when I was a teenager.

--Keggers in the Pasco County woods listening to locally-made, homegrown bands while enjoying locally-made, homegrown organic refreshments.

--Snagging street signs like “Tobacco Road” and “Stoner Woods.”

--Gathering in front of fiery wooden planks with drunks driving past us down Courtney Campbell Causeway.

--“Borrowing” multi-colored flags from apartment complexes and car dealerships to decorate some guy’s apartment.

--Drag racing Van Dyke before crashing the afterparty off Smitter Road .

--“Temporarily using” yellow lights from roadblocks to decorate some guy’s backseat.

--Sneaking onto a ship docked at Harbor Island just to drink lemonade and lager with a few hundred British sailors.

--Letting eggs and toilet paper express our anger when someone broke up with Sharon. (We didn’t have blogs back then.)

But nowadays…these kids…I tell ya.

This past weekend, one of my students, Alison*, participated in a scavenger hunt with eighty of her closest friends. Each team put in some money and the ones who checked the most off their lists in a specified amount of time won about four hundred dollars.

Alison’s team won.

“What was on the list?” I asked.

Big mistake.

“I had to drink a glass full of raw eggs," she said. "My friend Toad had to swallow a live goldfish and then throw it up. Roxy had to get her nipples pierced. She swore it didn’t hurt. We had a whole list. But we ignored anything that said we had to drink shots of liquor or smoke weed. Aren’t you proud of me?’

(long pause)

“You had to vomit a goldfish?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Toad did.”

My friends and I did scavenger hunts, too. But the weirdest thing we ever had to find was a hot exchange student wandering around Mission Bell who would get in our car without resistance.

But.

We did it while enjoying organic refreshments.

So yes, Allison, I suppose I am proud that at least you were sober when you drank the eggs. That’s gotta count for something.