florida

i have seen two cars upside-down on the highway in my life and another time i saw a helicopter on the roadway, blades spinning, blocking all the lanes of traffic on I-95. i'm not sure what happened. and when i think about things like car accidents, i think about the events that must have led up to that moment and i think how these minor decisions that we make in our lives can have huge consequences, you know? i mention this because i was down in florida visiting my grandmother who lives there and my parents who don't live there and who also left a day before me, so i had a morning to myself before i was supposed to return the rental car and fly back to portland. 

now i hope you'll indulge me for a minute while i veer off-course, but there are some things about florida that you should know. first of all, on the way there you'll be sitting in an exit row with the largest man on the flight. and you, being broad-shouldered yourself, will be unable to sit with your back flat against the seat and so for the duration of the four hour flight from vegas to orlando, you will sit cock-eyed against the wall while the electrician next to you burps up the beer and sausage he had in the airport, and you might find the slowly-evolving scents of his digestion interesting if you hadn't given up meat two years ago. then you will wait for your bag with a woman wearing red knit hand warmers and an ed hardy tank-top in the 82 degree florida evening. then after four hours in the orlando airport (where they mercifully have wireless internet) waiting for your parents to arrive, you'll pile into a rented chevy malibu that costs $148 per day and drive down the coast for an hour and a half to your grandmother's house along a route that used to be lined with fragrant orange trees, but is now a series of strip malls, your favorite of which houses a restaurant called "beef o'brady's". ah, irish cuisine, the pinnacle of culinary achievement! (ah, strip malls, the pinnacle of commercial achievement...!) but hey, it's not all bad, there are still some open spaces left along the drive, though they are principally gated communities abandoned by their developers with solitary gatehouses guarding hundreds of acres of paved cul-de-sacs and crab grass. 

(and in defense of florida and to avoid coming across as something of a sourpuss, i did have a nice time. my dad and i caught (and released) a bluefish, a sea trout, a mullet and a bar jack, i got a few laughs out of my grandmother who has all but succumbed to her alzheimer's, i cooked some dinner with my mom and played golf with my aunt and uncle. oh there were manatee and dolphin and an egret i saw eating a rat, there was body-surfing and a rocket launched from cape canaveral that we all watched from the backyard. florida, i don't love you and i am still upset about 2000, though i am pretty sure you voted for gore, but as long as you have people i care about in you, i will put up with you.)

but so, my original point was something about the way things work out and how our insignificant decisions can have profound effects on our lives and the reason i brought that up in the first place was because i was driving from grandma's to the airport back along that gauntlet of floundering commerce and i was driving pretty slow in the fast lane, which i don't usually do unlike the drivers from the states of california and massachussetts, who seem unaware of the fact that the left lane is for passing and not traveling the same speed as the cars next to you. but anyway i was in the left lane, slowly gaining on a truck that was a couple hundred yards in front of me and mc hammer's "you can't touch this" came on the radio and something flew off the truck. i don't know what reason any radio station could possibly have for playing mc hammer in 2010. but what flew off the truck in front of me was a windshield from one of the junked cars it was hauling. the entire windshield, 30 feet in the air. it landed a few feet in front of my car in the right lane and the malibu was pelted by pea-sized bits of shatterproof glass. now what if that windshield had landed on my car? would i have boarded this plane safe and sound, or would i be upside-down in well-rated american car, wheels spinning on the side of highway 520 outside of orlando?