Floridians are progress-obsessed, historically rootless and boundlessly optimistic
I've lost track of how many times Florida Man has been in trouble this year. It does seem that Florida Woman is quickly catching up, a dubious win for gender equality but a definite one for coarse public amusement.
It's a pity Mark Twain didn't spend more time in Florida. He might have found inspiration for characters more absurd than any on the Mississippi.
Most Floridians, however, don't hold up a convenience store and demand all the toilet paper, or jump into a pit of hungry alligators to take a selfie with Old Algaeback. We're just easy-going in a frantic sort of way. You might say that in some ways Floridians are the quintessential Americans: casual, progress-obsessed, historically rootless and boundlessly optimistic.
Recently I went to the grocery, and for the 998th of the last thousand times I've stood in a Florida supermarket line, the half-naked shopper ahead of me dumped his stuff on the conveyer and whipped out a smartphone, without even glancing at the bright yellow dividers that are there to keep groceries separate and the world civilized.
It's an un-Floridian peeve of mine, I'll admit. But I couldn't reach the dividers over his tower of TV dinners, and resigned myself to telling the clerk that, no, that huge case of 5.9% rotgut is not mine. I smiled grimly, reflecting that it's hard to maintain formality in other things when 93% of one's sunburned hide is willfully exposed even in the frozen foods aisle.
Although sales of dinner jackets are slow outside of Palm Beach, Florida is the world's No. 1 destination for things that really matter, like mud-bogging, sunbathing, imbibing mixed drinks and waiting in theme-park lines. Florida is always getting bigger and better, and anything that can bigger-better all rivals must be good.
That's why in Florida you'll see TV commercials like, "Coming to the Tamplando Megacenter! World's largest hot tub expo! 200 acres of hot tubs and whirlpools! Visit our custom section: See a hot tub in a car! See a hot tub on a plane!"
If it's free, thousands of Floridians will crowd the place, even if we haven't the least interest in hot tubs. It's something to do when thunderstorms or escaped tigers drive us indoors (escaped cobras are apparently best avoided outdoors), and without charge we get to mill around as if we were in a crowded theme park.
Despite being settled decades before any other American colony, few Floridians see our state as having much of a past. Florida's Spanish missions, built from wattle and daub (sort of the vinyl siding of colonial architecture), decayed faster than oranges on the ground. Most new Floridians' exposure to antique Florida begins when they bounce over asphalt seemingly neglected since the days of the friars.
With our ancestral ties to Florida averaging about long enough to have found a good RV park, we do the characteristic American thing and mold some heritage from concrete or fiberglass. Shopping centers that look like Mission Santa Barbara and castles that Bavaria's Ludwig II would have dismissed as outlandish sprout from the jungle just in time to welcome Florida's latest arrivals.
And whenever Floridians find ourselves up against any threat to limitless progress, our unequalled talent for demolishing obstacles keeps Florida moving forward. Florida is the most paved, canalized and terraformed state in the Union. We get a full geographical facelift every few decades, and always seem to end up having good cause to sue the surgeons.
With Florida's environment slowly becoming a green hell as invasive species take over — air potato, tropical soda apple, the six-legged barracuda — we can hardly be blamed for bulldozing it all and dividing the resulting wasteland into tiny lots with 120 square feet of St. Augustine grass and two severely pruned crape myrtles per house.
Perhaps builders could add a touch of retro Florida by constructing new houses with faux wattle and daub siding. They'd have class to rival the best fake half-timbered bungalows of the 1920s, yet the optional hot tub out back would add a suitably Floridian informality.
Just be sure to check for alligators and barracuda before stepping in.
Michael Stephens lives in Gainesville.
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This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Michael Stephens: Floridians are the quintessential Americans
