The Most Annoying Question if you Grew up on Cape Cod..
Whether you went away to college, are on vacation or just strike up a conversation with a person who isn’t from the area..whenever someone asks where you’re from and you respond with “Cape Cod”, they almost always have an idiotic answer. It usually falls somewhere between “like..you grew up there? Like even went to school there and stuff?” or “no, I mean like where you’re from..like originally, not where you summered”. But hands down, the question I always for some reason get incredibly annoyed with is,
What the hell did you do in the winter?
You mean outside of making babies and/or forming drug problems? Or things outside of celebrating the fact that there’s no more traffic, not having to wait in line for a beer or pay a cover to get into a bar that normally offers us money to go there in the winter?
We do this.
But seriously, we do the same shit we do in the summer, just in more layers. I did all kinds of great things in the winter on Cape Cod. For starters, we spend just as much time on the beach, it just happens to be in sweatshirts around a fire and usually illegally because you can’t drink or have fires on public beaches. Actually, we do that in the summer too but in the winter we have to seek out private establishments that were only inhibited in the summer so we could get a solid 3-4 hours of drinking in before the Cops came. Here’s a picture of Hippie and Insane Tony getting ready for a bonfire party this past winter:
If there wasn’t a bonfire to attend at a random private beach behind a rich persons home, then we of course got in our cars and *P-5’d around town. P-5ing was one of my favorite things to do because I had a Chevy Blazer with a pretty decent system (and by ‘decent system’ I mean a hatch back that I would 100% drive with open and a tape player) that I would bump to the sounds of my sweet mix tape containing the hottest tracks from Ice Cube and Britney Spears.
*If you don’t know what a P-5 is, then you’re clearly not from Cape Cod, which means you probs won’t find any of this relevant, but I’m okay with sharing the wealth that is Cape Cod Winter Knowledge. A Portuguese-500, or P-5 as we call it, is when you get in your car and drive in some sort of circle with no other purpose other than to see who else is driving around said circle. I’m from Falmouth, so our P-5 typically consisted of starting somewhere around the Christmas Tree Shop/Dairy Queen area, continuing uptown to see if the fast and the furious were at Dunkin Donuts (even though you would never stop, ew, you just wanted to see) driving down main street, around the village green, back down main street, and then..well, you’re done I guess. Sometimes I’d take a detour down to the Harbor until I almost got arrested once and then I only went there at night with summer hockey kids. Wooops. Also – some people thought a real P-5 was starting on Hyannis Main St and going all the way to Falmouth Village Green but seriously, who has time for that? That’s like a P-5,000.
No word of a lie I met a kid once whose response when I said I grew up on Cape Cod was, “I heard you guys drive around in circles for fun in the winter.” Say it like it’s a bad thing but I had a fucking blast waving at people and bumping my sweet jams while housing my Dairy Queen cone. Dick.
Football games were always a huge thing in High School. Not so much attending the games to watch, but meeting up at an after party at someone’s parents house or Friendly’s to not buy anything but rather see how long it takes you to get kicked out when you order 1 milkshake for a table of 7 because you were too poor to buy anything else. It’s fucking winter, we didn’t work, and why the fuck are fribbles so expensive? Anyways..
All of this might sound boring for some of you city folk, but one thing I feel as though you get as a result of a Cape Cod upbringing is the most grounded, real and best group of friends anyone can have. Sure, there were different “groups” in high school but we all came together at some point in our childhood or adult life because there wasn’t anything else to fucking do! You might have rolled in different circles but that shit went out the window when the party started and the beers started flowing. You spend years in school with the same people and know their stories whether you want to or not. I have met some amazing people I’m proud to call my friends but none like my Cape friends.
They’re the ones you spent all day, every day with when there was nothing to do but steal shit from Cherry and Webb or freeze your ass off around a bonfire at Trunk River. They’ll eat bologna sandwiches for lunch instead of waiting in line at the food shack at the beach because they know you’d rather spend the $8.50 on two beers that night. They always have a beach chair in their trunk and would rather die than wear heels out on Cape Cod. They’re your best friends, they’re home.
Twitter: Hippie - Insane Tony
