In case you were wondering, my spring break can be summed up by one scene from “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” (2003). I unashamedly consider the movie to be one of my all-time favorites and a great achievement in filmmaking. It’s got romance and pirates and Johnny Depp and pirates and sword fights and pirates. Did I mention it has pirates? In this scene, we find a fresh-faced Keira Knightley playing an indignant Elizabeth Swann, accosting the bemused, rum-toting Jack Sparrow (a role that, lest we forget, got Depp nominated for an Oscar). Incredulous, Elizabeth asks, “So that’s it, then? That’s the secret, grand adventure of the infamous Jack Sparrow. You spent three days lying on a beach drinking rum.” To which Sparrow replies, with a sexy little chest shimmy, “Welcome to the Caribbean.”
In case you haven’t figured it out, I was on a cruise ship to the Caribbean for spring break, which is like a pirate ship in a lot of ways: you are on a boat in the middle of the ocean, and there is a lot of rum. I may be exaggerating the debauchery aspect of the cruise to keep the pirate metaphor going -— I mostly just sat in the sun getting moderately sunburned and reading Helene Wecker’s “The Golem and the Jinni” and 75 percent of Michael Chabon’s “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.” I finished about 1,000 pages of non-required reading, since there was no free Wi-Fi on the boat, and who brings a laptop to go snorkeling in the Virgin Islands? Of course, when I finally did check my email back in Florida, I had approximately a gazillion unread messages, two of which were important and time sensitive, four of which were job rejections and 937 that did not pertain to me at all and merely made it more difficult to identify and reply to the time sensitive ones. Folks, I’m not going to join your club or buy your textbook or loan you the car I don’t have. I am officially a spring term senior and as such will begin to shirk all my responsibilities, except this column, which I really enjoy writing and I think maybe two dozen of you enjoy reading.
I could have devoted my first column of the last term to some cliché about seizing the day or making the most of every last moment, but counting down until the end of everything seems unbearably depressing. Yes, I have maybe only two or three trips left on the Dartmouth Coach, and only so many tender quesos, mozzarella sticks, Green Print malfunctions and pong games to look forward to. But I’m not going to do some epic countdown, because if I actually stopped and calculated the days left of school or weeks until my thesis is due, I may have a mild panic attack. So I’m going to talk about pirates instead, because I’m still basking in the memory of the turquoise waters of the Caribbean, despite Hanover’s best attempts to quash my spring break afterglow with a foot of snow still on the ground.
According to my Eyewitness Pirate book, which I adored as a child and have more or less committed to memory, being a pirate was actually pretty boring. You spent most of your time sitting on a boat, trying not to get scurvy and waiting for something exciting to happen. But being factually accurate can be awfully limiting sometimes, so let’s go with the movie version, with witty wisecracking heroes to rally behind and undead monsters to vanquish. Yes, I know that being a pirate is not a valid career goal, but I can’t help being attracted to that sense of adventure and freedom — the idea of hopping on your own personal ship and going off to explore the world, and maybe discovering a magical isle or two while you’re at it.
I used to think that everyone graduated Dartmouth with a well-paying job in some glamorous city, acquired from a prestigious junior summer internship. Sure, some people do. But if you’re one of the people (like me!) who have 10 or so weeks left to figure out what you’re doing with your life and where you’re going to live, that’s okay, too. At least that’s what they tell me.
So maybe my epic Dartmouth finale will not match the ending of the first “Pirates” film, where Sparrow has defeated the evil Captain Barbossa and escaped the clutches of the British Navy, finally reclaiming his position as captain of the Black Pearl. It’s definitely not going to be like the ending to the second film, either, where Jack Sparrow gets eaten by the Kraken. I’m aiming for something more like the third one, where Jack, after defeating the British Navy with the help of some kind of sea goddess thing, finds that his boat has been stolen by the no-longer-dead Captain Barbossa. But that’s okay! Because he’s Captain Jack Sparrow, and he hops alone into a small, questionably seaworthy dinghy and sets off to explore some uncharted waters. So for these last 10 weeks, let us channel the indomitable spirit of the one and only Captain Jack Sparrow. Bring me that horizon. Drink up, me hearties, yo ho.
