The Everywhereist

Standing in the stall of bathroom on the second floor of Nordstrom’s, I lost it.

I stood, sniffling, as women around me buzzed in and out of stalls, chatting with friends and helping children wash their hands. I tried to compose myself: it wasn’t working. I was holding back the tears, but only barely.

It was stupid, really, when I thought about it. We’d been in the Lego store in Aventura Mall in southern Florida. The friggin Lego store. Not exactly the place you’d imagine would be the site of spite and vitriol. We wandered around with my cousin’s kids, who were excitedly pointing out things that they liked. I pointed to something, and in the process, came within a foot of touching a fellow shopper – a well-dressed middle-aged woman. I did not, I would like to note, actually touch her. But I am sure I interacted with some molecules that later grazed her personal space, and for this, she was not happy.

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In my family, I have six male cousins, all of whom are older than me. Add to the mix my big brother, and I was left the sole girl amongst 7 boys.

They read comics and played Atari, and sometimes I got to watch.

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It is the first Monday of the new year, and I am sure many of you, like me, are in the throes of a rather nasty vacation hangover. I can picture you, wherever you may find yourself (at the office; in a minivan full of children you don’t really know or like; in central holding as you await bail for a crime that you are fairly certain you didn’t commit), an errant piece of tinsel still in your hair, a few crumbs (remnants of a long-ago eaten holiday treat) grazing your lips. You whisper, “I do not want to be here,” but no one responds. Your current fate is now more tortuous than watching a Nick Cage movie marathon.

Or perhaps you are of one the lucky few who has woken up, bright and early, bursting with energy and excitement about all the new year has to offer. In which case I don’t think we can be friends, because you probably also enjoy tetanus shots, jogging, and eating an apple for dessert.

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I like how the marquee reads like a weird birth announcement: "Congratulations! A school!"

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Elementary school was not an easy time for me. I know, you’re shocked, right?

I mean, who wouldn’t want to  be friends with a 70-pound girl with an adult-sized nose? (Quote from my friend Peter: “You must have looked like a pterodactyl.”) Plus, I was awesome. My incomplete Babysitter’s Club book collection, my gender-bending hairstyles, my failed knitting projects (I could make a scarf. Provided your definition of scarf is “a slowly unraveling trapezoid”.)  I only wish I was that cool now.

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It seems so odd that I’m doing a round-up of photos from Florida, of all places. I lived there for years. I might as well do a photo round-up of my own house. Actually, come to think of it, I have done that.

Aaaaaaaand on that note, here’s ten photos from that strange and magical place I used to call home.

1. I show my enthusiasm for Jews for Jesus. And vacation rentals.
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   I'm also fairly intrigued by Boston Nails and New Wave Fitness.

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2. I may have screamed when I saw the license plate on the car in front of us – it read “Pastry Chef.”
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   Pardon the quality of this photo. My hands start to shake whenever I think of dessert.

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As a kid, I never understood the expression “You can’t go home again”. I thought it was idiotic. After sleepovers at friends’ houses, after long afternoons at band practice, after a week at SeaCamp (oh, don’t act so surprised: I was and still am a dork), home was always waiting for me. No matter how much time had passed, I’d reasoned that the one thing that you could always go back to was go home.

As I grew older, my understanding of this concept changed slightly. You could still go home, but you might find that someone else lives there. Or that you aren’t welcome any more. Or that your room has been turned into a storage closet and all of your personal possessions are “in the attic” or were “given to the Goodwill.”

Time passes, people change, and sometimes home is no longer that. This realization hit me a few weeks ago, when I returned to the only place besides Seattle that I’ve ever called home: Indialantic, Florida.

What’s that? … Oh, please. You have NOT heard of it. You are thinking of Indiana. Or possibly Atlantis. Both of which have a larger population of residents/mer-people than Indialatic (pop: 3,000).

Indialantic lies on a spit of land sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian River, and its name is as portmanteau of those two bodies of water. It is not vibrant or bustling. There’s no movie theater. I don’t know what kids nowadays do on a Saturday night (I know what we did. We rented Jeff Goldblum movies and giggled at his impossibly small waist. Kids today now ogle hairless, poreless young men who were probably genetically engineered by Disney. How sad.)

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Since my friend Desiree’s visited a few weeks back, and I’m awaiting an upcoming visit from Christine (the brilliant blogatrix behind this post, and several awesome comments on the site) I’ve been thinking a lot about my life in Florida, and how I’ve changed since then.

Don’t worry – this isn’t some sort of soul-searching post. Nor is it a reflection on how much I’ve grown (gag) or anything of the sort. Because let’s face it: the only thing about me that’s grown since I’ve left Florida is my delightful posterior (more to love, bitches!).

Rather, this is a post about the habits I had in Florida, habits that I suspect most people have in the south. And how different my everyday routine is now that I live in a cooler, rainy climate like the Pacific Northwest. Why do I bring this up? Because the United State is huge. I don’t know if you’ve realized how huge, but here’s a brief reminder:

I am embarassed by how long it took me to make this.

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I’ve noted before on the blog how strange my upbringing in Florida strikes me sometimes. Compared to Seattle, it is a radically different place: flatter, more conservative, and somehow weirder.

I remember being devastated when we moved away in the middle of my freshman year of high school (this will remain a sore spot in family history for decades, but that’s another story). And while I wish that certain things had played out differently (because walking into a cafeteria as a freshman in the middle of the school year and knowing no one is absolutely terrifying) I am very, very happy that I no longer live in Florida. Not because I don’t love it or the people, but because so much of the stuff I see when I travel down there is so ridiculously jacked up, that I have to take photos.

And that’s just time consuming.

Behold some of the crazier sh*t the hubby and I saw on our last trip.

1. Tea baggers, Ft. Lauderdale, Fl.

I wish we had photo-bombed them with a sign that says, "Honk if you're scared of black people."

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