"You get STDs if you go DTS for MDW."

Today I took off from work and went to the beach with some friends.

Let me start by saying that nothing excites me more than Garden State Parkway South. Blasting "Just a Friend" and Brand New's old tunes and singing loudly with the windows open makes me beyond excited. I love when the car ride over, when I can peel my legs off the leather seat and stand up, ferris wheel in plain sight, breathing in fresh cold ocean air.

And then I walk up to the Seaside boardwalk and I remember why my generation hilariously sucks. It is the reason why other states hate us. You probably know Seaside from that trainwreck of a show Jersey Shore, actually. The boardwalk is surreal for the Seaside virgin. And also for the overall virgin, because you get eye-fucked a lot. Anyone. No one is below a drunk guido's standards. But I digress.

Everyone has tried to profit from the MTV show Jersey Shore. In the small boardwalk shops, there are $40 pairs of underwear that say things like "Pauly D's Girl" and "No back entry" and "Everyone loves a Jersey Girl" on the ass. I kid you not. Last year there were sparse amounts of Jersey Girl booty shorts in Seaside (I found some in Lavalette, a neighboring shore town, though!)



But this year the boardwalk stores were chock full of Jersey apparel. The Seaside this year is an exaggerated version of itself. As my friend Nicole, who sports a tattoo of NJ behind her ear, stated, "We loved Jersey before it was cool to love Jersey."

And because of the show, DTS for MDW will be crazy.

And what do these initials mean, you ask? North Jersey teenagers have a tradition for Memorial Day Weekend (MDW!). And it may not involve flags or parades or even veterans at all. Actually, it probably sometimes involves unintentionally pissing on people's lawns. Today (Wednesday) my friends pretty much planned our trip in the calm before the storm. Fortunately, most high school students can only take off a certain number of days, and the day before Memorial Day Weekend in my high school was our Senior Cut Day. They'll go down the shore on Thursday or Friday and rent out a house. College students with whom I (unfortunately?) went to high school start their Memorial Day Weekends as early as Tuesday.



Think of every Text from Last Night you've ever read. Imagine all the senders are between the ages of about 16 and 20, and that they have access to unlimited alcohol from heaven-knows-where. And they are living in houses together, galavanting at night and trying to enter everyone else's boyfriends into a round robin fuck fest. From what I understand, as an avid observer and social outcast, this is DTS for MDW. And Jersey Shore is just an exaggerated account of this that stayed in the tanning bed a little too long.