Isha And Co. Visit Florida

Dentists and Alligators, A Toothsome Adventure, part 2/4

Part 2/4: Isha Yiras Hashem and Co. Visit Florida

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As you know, I only travel to atone for my sins.¹ And I had recently atoned for many of my sins, by traveling with my family. To Florida. I hoped to atone for my sins without involving even one vicious reptilian predator.

People talk about alligators in Florida. We were not going to visit the alligators. We were going to visit extended family. We don't actually have any family residing in Florida, but our relatives took a vacation there, for reasons known only to the Bermuda Triangle.²

Even more inexplicably, they actually wanted to see us on their vacation. This made sense, since we were in Florida—where its own unique logic prevails, much like its special predators. That's why so many headlines start with the words “Florida Man”.³

For my kids and me, it was our first time in Florida. To ensure our children displayed their best behavior in front of seldom-seen relatives, we often took walks. Taking walks is always fun. You never know what you'll miss if you don't take 1000 steps away from where you currently are.

These were not regular walks. In honor of Florida, I announced that we were going to look for alligators and crocodiles, every time we left the house. I was looking for an opportunity to quote the verse,

Speak and you shall say; So says the Lord God: Behold I am upon you, O Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great crocodile that lies down in the midst of its rivers, who said,

"My river is my own, and I made myself.”⁴

After a few days, we hadn't seen any alligators. Or crocodiles. This made sense to me. No developed nation’s government would allow vicious reptilian predators to roam freely in public.

People talk about alligators in Florida. But Isha Yiras Hashem wasn't born yesterday. People talk about moose and bears in Maine, and mountain lions in Montana. Not only have I never met someone personally harmed by moose or bears or mountain lions, but there are a lot of people who go out of their way to find them. Some even pay to see them at the zoo.

I thought of Florida's alligators like Maine's moose—big, potentially dangerous, but only if you know where to go to find them.

Besides, moose aren't vicious predators, and yet there are warning signs in Maine if there is even the faintest possibility of encountering one. In fact, since the state was founded in 1820, a Moose crossing sign has been put up every single time someone saw a moose, which is why Maine is blanketed with Moose crossing signs.⁵

There was not a single ‘Alligator Crossing’ sign in all of Florida.

Surely, if real-life vicious predators existed, people would have warned us! I was expecting to see something like this:

The problem was, we were in Florida.⁶

Coming up:

Part 3/4: There Really Are Alligators Everywhere In Florida

Part 4/4: Gatorland

1.

2. Wikipedia: The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is an urban legend focused on a loosely defined region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The idea of the area as uniquely prone to disappearances arose in the mid-20th century, but most reputable sources dismiss the idea that there is any mystery.

3. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Man

Florida Man is an Internet meme first popularized in 2013, referring to an alleged prevalence of men performing irrational, maniacal, illogical, delusional, insane, and absurd actions in the U.S. state of Florida. Internet users typically submit links to news stories and articles about unusual or strange crimes and other events occurring in Florida, with stories' headlines often beginning with "Florida Man..." followed by the main event of the story. Because of the way news headlines are typically written, they can be creatively interpreted as implying that the subjects of the articles are all a single individual known as "Florida Man."

The Miami New Times claimed that freedom of information laws in Florida make it easier for journalists to obtain information about arrests from the police than in other states and that this is responsible for the large number of news articles. A CNN article on the meme also suggested that the breadth of reports of bizarre activities is due to a confluence of factors, including public records laws giving journalists fast and easy access to police reports, the relatively high population of the state, its highly variable weather, and gaps in mental health funding.

4. Ezekiel 29:3

5. I made this up.

6. See footnote 3.