This is your brain on Florida

While I do not consider Facebook comments to be a source of any great expertise or authority, there is one factoid I had to check out. A comment was made about handheld cell phone use while driving, to be illegal nationwide. Looking around from day to day, if that is true, there are a LOT of people breaking the law down here. I knew that it was probably not true, especially here in the land of “anything goes” (except when it comes to “family values” and non-Cubans washing up on shore). So I did a little investigating. Not only is there no law prohibiting handheld cell phone use in Florida, there is actually a Preemption Law that prohibits local jurisdictions from enacting restrictions. Wow… even if someone wakes up at the local level, their hands are tied by the state. Brilliant…

But it is not just bad behavior with cell phones that we are here to discuss today.

It has long been my contention that Floridian’s brains are permanently fried from the sun. Ask anyone who lives here what it is like to try something as simple as a trip to the local supermarket. Pedestrians will mill about and just stop right in front of your moving car, or leave their cart in your path. Drivers have no sense of keeping to the right and if you are driving sensibly on the RIGHT side, you will get an earful for being in their way. Then you have the joy of negotiating your way through the parking lot. It resembles playing “Frogger” for those who remember that old video game. When you get to the entrance, once again, there is no enter and exit on the right. People will run you over with their cart rather than go to the RIGHT side. Who exits and enters on the left? Did I miss that ordinance? Once inside, when you actually get past the people who stop right in the entrance to either start chatting or just stand there having some strange epiphany that keeps them from moving forward… it gets worse. When I first moved here, I was very forgiving… for a while. “Excuse me” turned to “EXCUSE ME” which turned to physically moving the carts that are part of a mid-aisle cart-side conversation that has no discernable end in sight. I raise my hands and invoke Divine Intervention and if they do not part like the Red Sea, I move them. Makes people crazy. Makes me crazier.

Back to the cell phones. Can anyone shop without a cell phone? “Which kind of mustard do you want? There is yellow, Dijon, honey mustard… what? OK, which brand? Well, there’s Hellman’s, Kraft, Grey Poupon… what? Which one is on sale? Well, let me get out my glasses…” etc. Wow… Crispy critters, all. You have to shout “EXCUSE ME” louder at these people because they can’t hear you over the phone conversation (or the little internal epiphany they are having). Once I have performed the parting of the carts enough times to make it to checkout, there are those damn cell phones again. People will complete their entire transaction without ever exchanging a word or making eye contact with the cashier. Of course, since the cashiers are in constant conversation with each other (be it English, Spanish, Creole or some bizarre combination thereof), it doesn’t really matter. On to the exit where the same person is still trying to hear what the voices in the sky are trying to tell them and then the people entering the building on the wrong side pushing your cart aside as they squeeze past you rather than go in the ENTRANCE.

I know many nice people down here. Most of them are crazy, but they are nice. It is the bad behavior that I have a problem with. I think the ultimate experience of complete abandon of reason was on my commute to work one day. A man on a motorcycle with no helmet (no helmet law here – I consider it to be Darwinism at its finest), no shirt, wearing shorts and… wait for it… Crocs, with a cell phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other. A close second was the man I saw this week in full business suit riding a Segway down the center suicide lane. To add to this moment of Zen, it had a basket on the front – ala Pewee Herman.

All of this seems to be perfectly acceptable behavior. What is not acceptable is for me to get married – In fact, same-sex marriage and civil unions were constitutionally banned by the voters of this fine state last November. I also, should I choose to do so, cannot adopt a child. This is only true in Florida and Arkansas (aka Darwin’s waiting room). I cannot give blood, even though there is nothing wrong with my blood – I am considered a high risk, unlike the people who sleep on the sidewalk and sell their blood. Other than those trivialities, I can chat and text on my cell phone without a care, toss trash out of my car window and nobody would mind, go to a “Pain Management” clinic and get enough oxycodone and xanax to kill an elephant (where they dispense the drugs on site), be fired from my job with no reason given (it is not a “right to work” state), and have a private conversation with aliens (the kind from space) in the middle of the entrance to any public place.

As I start the day with a morning temperature of 80 degrees at 5:30am in the middle of October, I ask myself the question that I often asked before I moved here. Why does anybody live here on purpose?

I’m waiting…

(This is a rant and all subject matter, including the humor, is intended to be taken seriously and offend nearly everybody.)