Park pet peeves, Park owner’s turn

Grit dog wrote:
Funny you mention that. Was on the phone a couple times with the FL tax collectors getting the info straight for our 19y/o son who is down there and sipped his car there this past year.
I purposefully called offices in small towns figuring it would help with phone wait times.
Both times, the lady was super nice, friendly and very helpful.
Almost unnaturally pleasant if that's a thing!

Florida gets such a bad rap because of the whole Florida Man thing, but the people there are pretty cool. It's just a shame that they're such horrible drivers. I've been all over the U.S. and Floridians get the gold medal for bad driving.

The locals all blame the tourists, but I came to see through that pretty quickly.

When I moved out of FL, I gave my buddies a TED Talk on "Flow", because it doesn't just pertain to driving.

* When you're in the Publix, pull your cart to the side of the aisle while you're reading the label on that spaghetti sauce so that the rest of us can get through.

* When you're on the road and see the light turn red, that doesn't mean you stop NOW wherever you are. It means to pull up about six feet off the bumper of the car in front of you to keep the queue tidy and to prevent other people from tucking in and cutting everyone else off.

* When you come to a yellow light, don't enter that intersection unless you're absolutely positive that you can make it across the other side without blocking the intersection.

* And speaking of red lights, the red light is not the signal to pick up your phone and start tweeting, especially if you're not situationally aware enough to know when the light turned green without me honking at you to wake you up.

* Coming to an intersection or a driveway? It's on YOU to stop and check that it's clear. It shouldn't be up to ME to know that "uh oh, that goober is gonna sail right out in front of me and I'd better avoid him/her if I don't wanna wreck".


But other than their lack of flow and their lack of vehicular skills, I met some amazing people there. I had to move there for part of last year and leave my family behind. Before I left, my elderly mother told me to "look out for angels when you get there, because you'll be all alone and you're going to need some angels to see you through your days". I hadn't ever thought of it that way, but son of a gun if Florida isn't chock full of people who totally qualified as angels. They were great people and I miss a lot of them.

There's also some devil in that place too. The last person I spoke to the day I hit the road to move out happened to be a hooker trying to close a deal with me at the Wa Wa. She got all mad when I turned her down: "What are you, one of those married guys?" Yep. And proud of it.

(Sorry for the hijack. Y'all need to pay better attention to your driving though. And no, it's not just the tourists. It's you.)