In my world and at present, there are few more beautiful sights in the world than crossing the Route 72 Causeway onto beautiful, sunny Long Beach Island for a week's vacation. (*ASIDE: Only in New Jersey would the terms "Route 72 Causeway" and "beautiful x2" be used in the same sentence.)Simply put, I'm a very big fan of the beach. I like relaxing; I enjoy sunbathing while reading a good book (or two) and listening to my iPod; and it's a lot of fun to spend money. Long Beach Island accomodates all of these things, and more.
I've never seen another place like this before, and it's hard to believe that it's in America (let alone New Jersey). It's an anachronistic place - because there's only one major road on the island, cars stop for pedestrians at stopwalks. Everyone here is polite, even though everyone here is from NJ, NY, or Massachusetts. There are family-owned department stores, grocery stores, drug stores, and restaurants. Besides a few national banks and an ACME grocery store, commercially-speaking it's very easy to place yourself in a completely different, earlier era. I am tempted to wear a bowler hat and a suit, and address random women as "Ma'am."
I'm down here with my girlfriend and a small, mixed group of her friends. I've spent time on LBI with many of these people for four summers now - all things considered, I've visited LBI for five straight summers now. The week, like the more microscopic act of getting ready to go to the beach, is very ritualistic. There are nearly-daily trips to the aforementioned beach, dining out at restaurants approximately half the time (which is very nice, but also very expensive), going out to bars at night sometimes, and visiting the very phallic Barnegat lighthouse at least once.
We stay generally in the vicinity of Beach Haven. For those of you who are unaware, LBI is a thirteen-mile long, very narrow barrier island. Beach Haven is on the south end of this island, and is the most middle-class destination on LBI -- the average home price here, due to the current recession, has tumbled to just under $800,000. (*ASIDE: When I visited in 2007, it was comfortably over $1M.) The north side of the island is even nicer, and is too expensive for eight young professionals in their twenties to even rent for a week.
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Taking a summer week and spending it at LBI is a very rich-white-kid thing to do. As such, I somewhat loathe how much I enjoy it.
You see, unlike many mere mortals, I am blessed with the great gift of introspection. This means that I am capable of determining really quickly whether I am being an asshole, which further means that I have stronger social graces than many people -- arguably. It also means I am completely fucking insane, but for the moment we'll ignore this unfortunate side-effect and focus instead on what it means to enjoy rich-white-kid things.
LBI is a very family-friendly place, and there are lots of teenagers running around. When I see these teenagers, I often think to myself, "These are the modern incarnation of the kids in high school I couldn't stand." Bolstered perhaps by a more stable (financially and emotionally) upbringing than my parents could afford, these teenagers look "cool" -- and it pisses me off. They look like the type of kid who drank liquor before the senior prom and definitely made out afterwards.
Now I generally dislike every human being between the ages of 2 and 20 (and if you don't, you're either a teacher, a parent, or a liar), so it may just be that I am a curmudgeon. But my suspicion is that it's more than that.
I am pretty lucky to have the life that I have. I have my health, my awesome girlfriend, a good job and a promising career. I can afford to spend the week at LBI and gamble at casinos many times a year. But I'm still pissed off about high school, because I was pretty lame and I had no clue how to deal with that. I still don't.
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My girlfriend's ten-year high school reunion is this month. I'm happy to be her date, and I'm happy to attend. But there's no way I'll reciprocate when my turn comes around in 2012. People will have changed - I have definitely changed - and I don't really care to find out how. Hopefully by then I will own a house on this damned island, even though I doubt I'll be able to.
Stay classy out there.
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