My Bad Tequila
Spring Breakers go on a road trip to Mexico for sun, surf and beach time.  Bad occurrence after bad occurrence sheds it's ugly face.  Who will and won't make it back to class??? 

Excerpt from Chapter 1:

'I felt all eyes on me as I climbed onto the blue bus that had once been yellow and now sported a Porta-Potty that was hooked up in the rear.  This was the end of my Mexican spring break holiday, and I was headed back to the frigid March wind and perhaps a skiff of snow in Boise, Idaho.

Little did I know at that time, my life would never be the same again.  "It's all good until it turns bad," I would later remember.

"Crap, last one on," I thought to myself.  My half-empty Corona with the lime trying to stay afloat dropped from my tanned, shaky hand.  It didn't break, as it hit the rubber mat  placed stategically within the doorway to allow for such things, domestic and foreign to bounce carelessly yet non abrasively onto the street.  The bottle rolled onto the pavement which consisted of gravel sewn together with black tar next to a partially eaten tamale covered with green salsa a bit too ripe.  I went after my beer ......

I boarded the bus, having a bit of difficulty due to the metal support brace on my right knee.  I looked at my "amigos," a word we used loosely that had been learned on this trip - each person, place or thing that we encountered was our amigo (friend).

"Sorry for being the last person."

It was 8:12 a.m.  We were supposed to be gone and on the broken asphalt highway back to life as we knew it at no later than 8:00 a.m.  There was a silence I have never heard before or since.  With my thumb I trapped the bee that that had been swarming around my beer, either attracted to the fruit inside the bottle or the rotten salsa smeared on the outside.

'Still nothing from Tina?"  The words came slurred from my dry, swollen, partly scabbed lips, which had enjoyed too much sun and salty margaritas.

My question was answered by the anguished looks of my fellow spring breakers.  Tina had not surfaced.  The last time any of us, including her two roommates had seen her was 36 hours earlier.

This is "My Bad Tequila."  This spring getaway was suppose to be a fun experience and a pleasant memory.  It ended up being more than a memory; it was an unpleasant walk through life.

We were 19 students, 3 parents and 1 scuba diving instructor named Craig on break from Boise State University.'

Excerpt from Chapter 1:

'Once inside the small bathroom that had one urinal which was about 3 feet in length, engineered in such a way that several men at a time could piss.  There was also a pint sized stall for taking care of other business.  Being the only one in the bano, I unzipped my Levis and proceeded to take a leak. 

When about half way finished, an old Mexican man came wheeling in, using his damaged, worn hands as a throttle to move his ancient wheelchair.  A half leg was missing on his left side and his jeans were tied in a knot to keep them from dragging or getting caught in a spoke from his mobile chair. He went to the opposite end of the urinal, got my attention and then slurred the words to me, "Cuidado, "Cuidado."'

Excerpt from Chapter 5:
 
""What are you looking at?"  my ears heard a female voice questioning.

Surprised and somewhat embarrassed I turned to see that Barbie had also made her way to the palapa pool bar and was now standing next to me with her back side leaning against the bar.  My slight blush left immediately and I responded "Chi chis".  This was a Spanish word that I had known since I was an eighth grader or so.

Barbie smiled and gave me a huge, long lasting wink notifying me via flirtation that everything was going to be great.  I asked her what she preferred to drink and after receiving her predetermined response ordered us both margaritas.  As I handed over the margarita she put her soft tan hand over mine and held it a half second before taking the mixed concoction from my stiffened fingers.'

Excerpt from Chapter 12:

'"You'll see the true reflection of me when the Tequila bottle is empty"  I shouted out to the wind as I tossed the sad, angry bottle-shaped mirror towards the sea.'

A Fairy Tale Half Ended
Incredible, Princess Diana is dead.  How can this be?  What happened?  The fairy tale was suppose to end with "and the princess lived happily ever after for many, many years, "not with the twisted wreckage of death, devastation and drunken driving.

As I watched this horror unravel, the familiar pain of losing a loved one engulfed me.  Diana was someone I had never personally met; yet, through her years of notoriety, I felt as though I knew her very well.  She brought pizazz and sparkle to the dowdy royals, while remaining regal in her demeanor.

Lovely Diana.  She was beauty and light; compassion and tenderness; impetuosity and fervorence.  The world watched as she married a prince, nurtured her children, suffered the humiliation of her husband's infidelity and publicly declared her own.  We saw how compassionate she was with the sick and how gentle she was with children, especially William and Harry.  I sadly grieve for them, as I too lost a parent at a tender age and know the desolation they are feeling.

As her life unfolded, we wanted to know that she was finally happy - able to thumb her nose at the family that plucked her from "common" life, then used it as a rod against her.  Happily stripping the title "Her Royal Highness" from her name, they looked on with disdain as her popularity grew even larger.  Little did they realize that a title does not a person make - admitting to a few flaws could never divert the love of the people that she so easily related to.

And yet, it was our admiration and obsession with her life that could have been the indirect cause of her death.  Our perpetuating need for more information brought about demand.  Our fascination brought big readership and huge dollars to the media.  "People Magazine" has said "that she appeared on their cover 47 times, more than any person."

Is there a lesson here?  Should we stop following the lives of fascinating people that make a difference in this world?  How do we stop the hounding and invasion of privacy and satisfy our curiosity at the same time?  The media displays what sells.  They write about the things we want to read about.  As long as there is a market there will be the paparazzi and the domino effect that follows.

Let's face it, "Princess Di" stories meant "big bucks" to those who relentlessly haunted and taunted her.  Perhaps from this tragedy there will come some honor to the thieves who stole her privacy and perhaps her remaining years.

Rico wrote this article for the DAS TOR on the evening of finding that the "Lovely Princess Diana" was no more.   He could think of nothing else and went straight to his computer and let his feelings do the writing. This short story was immediately put on the front page of the next issue.  Rico went through hundreds and hundreds of Princess Di photos before selecting the perfect one.  Just so happens he selected to use the same photo for his story that Time Magazine did for their cover page.  Only difference is that Time Magazine showed up on stands several days later.   He has proven again and again of his very unusual and artistic mind.

TROLL or Quest?  I suggest we change the name of the TROLL system to a new more fitting acronym, QUEST: "Queue Up Electronically-Scheduling Tough."

Besides, the word "troll" creates imagery; such as the half-naked little Don King-haired dolls that pop up in the markets every ten years or so.  For me, thoughts revert to a nightmarish fishing trip with my father, and his father, when I was five.   Rousted from a cozy bed at 4:00AM, we trolled up and down the icy Snake River in Idaho, cramped in a 12-foot boat with a 7.5 horsepower engine, and caught nothing.  I lost my first tooth biting into a cold bologna sandwich and bled all over my Wonder Bread.  Finding a hiding place in the bow, I waited for my day of trolling to end, vowing to never participate again.

That promise was broken on Sunday, November 23, 1996, when once again I found myself attempting to troll, sans the boat and the Wonder Bread.  Contrarily, it was I on the "hook."  For two hours and fifteen minutes, I dialed and redialed, to no avail.  Finally in frustration, I went for a little chat with the Registrar, Mr. David ............ .

Mr. .......... was most sympathetic, took full responsibility and encouraged me to use the inner-office phone system to try once again.  Whether it was the drone of the busy signal for nearly ninety minutes over the speaker phone, or his realization of the futility of this exercise, David (we are now on a first name basis) came to the rescue and entered my classes via the computer terminal.

Priority lost, most of the first choice classes gone, and nearly four valuable study hours forfeited, I was finally in.

Surely, at this level of academia, someone can come up with a better system than this: a) widen the window of registration opportunity, b) limit the options of status inquiries during the registration process; i.e., GPA, grades, waivers, etc., until after registration, (one student, who lost her priority during the last registration, broke through thirty minutes prior to her scheduled time and dabbled with inquiries until the last hour rolled over),  c) verify access codes prior to registration day (some students were barred from the system due to incorrect access codes). d) use the Internet for on-line registration, download to a usable application, and have the computer sort-code by priority.

Kudos to those of you who scheduled with success.  To the remainder, queue up in the protest line behind me.

Rico was given a special award by the his fellow classmates for problem solving this issue at Thunderbird, American Graduate School of International Business with his pen and sharp mind.  By writing the article as a staff writer in a non threatening way and adding some humor the Registrar's Office took his advice and made a better mouse trap.