February 29, 2008--Snowbirding: Among the Living Dead
The young man, with arms bursting from steroids and the venom of tattoo ink, looked at me as if I were one of the living dead.
He was here to snake out the drain in our sink which was clogged with hair.
I knew he was regarding me this way. As also from among them. I knew that look well after only six weeks in south Florida, and I had become familiar with that ugly phrase—the Living Dead. One of the regulars at the Green Owl, Troy, who is in the towing business, does very well cleaning up the wrecks of the doddering, who are still allowed to drive, and the very young, who careen around jacked up on medicinal and mechanical speed. This is Florida after all and the municipalities and merchants are willing to overlook the infirmities of the aging and the recklessness of the young—many livelihoods depend on each.
But every time Troy’s beeper goes off, pulling him away from his fourth cup of coffee and summoning him to a rear-ender on North Federal Highway, he says, with a sigh and a shrug, “I’m off again to the Land of the Living Dead.” And when I shoot him a look about his too-close-for-my-comfort political incorrectness, for my sake, as he darts off, he adds, “Well, it’s a living. . . . No pun, of course, intended.”
But who needs this attitude from the Roto-Rooter guy? Or the cracks I hear all the time that the name “Florida” is from 16th century Spanish which means “waiting to die.” What does that have to do with me? Don’t they see how vital and youthful I am?
Florida is one of those states where you can not only personalize your license plate—Gone Fishin, Re-Tired, Go Dolphins—but there are also dozens of Sunshine State generic plates that memorialize the Challenger Astronauts, call for saving the Manatees or the Everglades, promote citrus, display support for the Miami Heat, indicate you’re a golfer, or even defend the Right to Life. But there are none that say anything about aging, illness, dying, or death. Florida’s true growth industries.
Why just this morning, when visiting my mother in the rehab center where she is recovering from a small stroke, the bulletin board at the nurses’ station had a flyer posted that advertised a seminar, at $25 a participant, on the alliterative subject of “Bowels and Bladders.”
He was here to snake out the drain in our sink which was clogged with hair.
I knew he was regarding me this way. As also from among them. I knew that look well after only six weeks in south Florida, and I had become familiar with that ugly phrase—the Living Dead. One of the regulars at the Green Owl, Troy, who is in the towing business, does very well cleaning up the wrecks of the doddering, who are still allowed to drive, and the very young, who careen around jacked up on medicinal and mechanical speed. This is Florida after all and the municipalities and merchants are willing to overlook the infirmities of the aging and the recklessness of the young—many livelihoods depend on each.
But every time Troy’s beeper goes off, pulling him away from his fourth cup of coffee and summoning him to a rear-ender on North Federal Highway, he says, with a sigh and a shrug, “I’m off again to the Land of the Living Dead.” And when I shoot him a look about his too-close-for-my-comfort political incorrectness, for my sake, as he darts off, he adds, “Well, it’s a living. . . . No pun, of course, intended.”
But who needs this attitude from the Roto-Rooter guy? Or the cracks I hear all the time that the name “Florida” is from 16th century Spanish which means “waiting to die.” What does that have to do with me? Don’t they see how vital and youthful I am?
Florida is one of those states where you can not only personalize your license plate—Gone Fishin, Re-Tired, Go Dolphins—but there are also dozens of Sunshine State generic plates that memorialize the Challenger Astronauts, call for saving the Manatees or the Everglades, promote citrus, display support for the Miami Heat, indicate you’re a golfer, or even defend the Right to Life. But there are none that say anything about aging, illness, dying, or death. Florida’s true growth industries.
Why just this morning, when visiting my mother in the rehab center where she is recovering from a small stroke, the bulletin board at the nurses’ station had a flyer posted that advertised a seminar, at $25 a participant, on the alliterative subject of “Bowels and Bladders.”
posted by Steven Zwerling at
9:42 AM
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