Laura is afraid of Florida, and it has fallen on me to convince her that she is wrong to, even though she is right to. This is not a job I would have chosen, but that’s not how these things work: The job has chosen me. I was just minding my own business, trying to go to the bathroom and maybe, if the coast was clear, to pour myself a bowl of Cinnamon Life. But there Laura is, sitting at the kitchen table and eating a multi-colored meal, and she asks me if she can ask me a question. Sure.
She is considering attending the University of Florida, seeking some incomprehensible degree in international tax evasion. It is incomprehensible not because of the language barrier--she’s saying all the right words--but because I never know what rich people attending business school are talking about. I could write a whole post about the Eli and Edyth Broad-ification of higher education and my poorly thought-through critiques of it, but this is not what fate had in mind for me. Instead, Laura asks me if I know anything about Florida.
How do you answer that question honestly? You don’t, you lie and you say something noncommittal and pleasant: “It’s a beautiful place.” I don’t feel completely deceitful. Manatees and sunshine and whatever--my conscience is clear. But this does not satisfy Laura.
“Is it safe?” she asks. She is asking if Florida, the state where a man literally ate the face of another human person, is safe. How do you answer this question honestly? You don’t, but you can’t avoid the truth completely, so you take a shot in the dark and appeal to a sense of adventure: “I’d say it’s more defined by its strangeness than it is by its dangerousness.”
“What?!” This does not disarm Laura at all. Strangeness is scary too, it’s immediately clear from the furrow of her brow. “How is it strange?”
It is the kind of place where men eat the faces of other men. “It’s just very far removed from the rest of the country, sometimes,” I say. This satisfies her for a moment. But only for a moment, because the topic turns to wildlife. Manatees and sunshine do not begin to counterbalance alligators and snakes. They’re having a problem with giant pythons right now.
I’m just going to post this and try to get further in it later.
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