Fiji! (6 of lots)

In the ocean on my beach were a couple of the college-age backpacking girls.  I pulled up some ocean next to 'em and had a chat.  We could not have been more different -- I wasn't like them at that age, and I seriously doubt they'd grow up to be me.  They had dumped their boyfriends in order to go travelling. Had been on the road for months.  Only thing they missed about home (the U.S.) was Mexican food.  They told me how they'd "hooked up" with guys from so many different countries on their travels (and then confided that they counted it as "hooked up" if the guy kissed them -- they didn't want me to think they were "sluts or anything").  They liked taking rides from strangers.  One of them said that the bad stuff you'd get from the one guy in fifty (and it is one in fifty, she said knowingly) that is trouble doesn't outweigh the fun you get from the other forty-nine.  (I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying that, from my work in the criminal justice system, I'd suspect there were lots of crime victims--or their families--who wouldn't agree with her on that.)  They had no jobs (later regaling us, with glee, about how they just walked out on jobs they hated, leaving customers just standing there), no cars, no responsibilities, and wouldn't have it any other way.  When I told them how different my life was from theirs, one of them said, "Don't feel bad.  Sometimes I wish I was old and settled."  When I mock-cringed, she said, "I didn't mean it that way."  And I thought, "Yes, you did.  The same way I mean it when I think, 'Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be young and stupid.'"  But I said, "I know you didn't," and smiled and swam off, thinking I was as happy to be me as they were to be them.