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.)

Zen, the Art of Tri-Fold, and Wisdom of Lily von Shtupp

I am tired of doctor’s offices. I am tired of waiting rooms, examining rooms, patronizing medical staff, hospitals, fasting, phlebotomists who can’t find a vein, tests, test results, more tests, insurance companies who try to dictate what your doctor should be prescribing, doctors who don’t talk to each other (yet work in the same hospital system)… as Lily von Shtupp sang in “Blazing Saddles,” “Tired of pwayin’ da game, ain't it a fwiggin’ shame… Let’s face it, I’m tired.”

There is within us all a place of strength. A place that, when we remember it is there, gives us tremendous power and resilience. It only takes a few moments a day to tap into that place and allow it to carry us through the day.

This economy sucks. It has completely fucked any plans for moving to a more temperate location and getting on with our lives in any way other than “getting by.” People’s nerves and emotions are on edge at work. One can play the role of “the voice of reason” for only so long before you want to scream ‘Don’t you people fucking get it?” Half are in panic (as they should be) and half are oblivious (as they always have been and will be). As I have observed before in other jobs, the higher up you go in the chain of decision making, the scarier it gets. Add to that, living in possibly the rudest place I have ever lived (and I come from New Jersey), it makes the day-to-day nothing more than something to be endured. I hate South Florida.

I love palm trees. My parents lived in Florida for five years and I would visit each February. They lived in a house that was right on a mangrove with exotic flora and fauna just outside their door. Of all of the things that were so different from the cold, Maine winters I would be visiting from, it was the palm trees. For some reason, they made me smile. They still do.

When I told my boss that I would be needing more time off today for a doctor visit and tests, she suggested that I take the day off. Bless her heart. At first I thought that it would only make my already unmanageable workload even worse. But as the week went on, I realized that a little time off right now would be a good thing. Still, I took work home with me and what am I doing while writing this? Laundry, cleaning up, etc. I suppose it is my way of bringing some order to a world of chaos in a way that I can control… my own personal battle with entropy. There is Zen in a clean tri-fold of shirts, towels, and underwear (yes, we tri-fold our underwear). It is 78 degrees outside; dry, sunny – and I am using my time off for laundry and logging into the server at work.

I am often surprised to hear how many people feel that they “have no choice.” “I hate my job, but I have no choice.” “I want to break up, but I have no choice.” “I want to do this another way but I have no choice.” There is always a choice. Of course, there is also accountability and consequence. When you face those two things, you choices expand considerably.

Yesterday, at work, we had a speaker who was a psychologist gracing us with her personal vision (and sales pitch for her business) about coping during these difficult times. She went on about Eastern Philosophy (mostly Buddhism) and how many of the more effective coping mechanisms used in Western culture were stolen from the East. Even though there was noting particularly wrong about what she said, who has not heard all of this before? Well, apparently everyone else in the room. I couldn’t let it go. Normally, I am a good soldier, but this one I could not let go. When she motioned the author Pema Chodron, I said “the author of ‘When Things Fall Apart’ - yup, I read it.” That got me a glare and was just the beginning. By the third of fourth round we had, she offered me $5 to keep my mouth shut. I said, “You don’t want me to do that. As a psychologist, don’t you want to know how I feel?” For all those who live in the world of psychobabble – don’t assume we are all newbies and ignorant just because you read “The Secret” and most of the other manipulative bull out there, and that you have stumbled upon THE ANSWER.

There is a place deep inside, in the heart of hearts, the place where we are our naked selves with no judgment, pretense, or walls of defense. For many, just the thought of this place frightens. For those who have been there, it is where our answers reside – only if we are listening.

“I am a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.” All of these things are me.