The Joys of Southern Living

People are always making jokes about all the retired people in Florida....and there is a good reason why they do.

Tim and I just spent the holidays there, and have decided that, when the time comes to retire, we will be thinking of Alaska or Canada or anyplace else as far away from Florida as we can get. Maybe Antarctica even.

First, there are issues with driving.

You would think that being retired, these people would have patience. Or at least nothing better to do than work on their anger management issues. Not so. Pull up to any light/stop sign, and before your wheels even stop turning, the guy behind you is laying on the horn like he's on his way to the ER to save lives instead of to the community cocktail hour (which, as far as I can tell, begins at 11:00 am) to have his martini. Seriously, I'm pretty sure red means stop, even in Florida. If you actually do come to a stop, and God forbid it's in the right lane where people are allowed to turn on red, the cacophony of horns behind you would wake the dead (no, I am not going to take the obvious joke here).

Conversely, time is definitely not of the essence when it comes to parking. If you manage to get behind them then, you might just as well throw the car into park and break out War and Peace.

Now, I'm not talking parallel parking, which can be tricky. I'm talking about front-end-in parking in a parking lot with a compact car in a space designed for an SUV. A toddler on a Big Wheels aiming at the garage of Barbie's dream house could do a better job.

There is the first swing where they almost plow into whoever has the misfortune to be parked in one of the adjoining spaces. Then, they jam it into reverse and aim for the car behind them. The third swing has them gunning for the car in the other adjoining space. Swings four and five are where they try to decide who will be getting screwed that day by not being able to get into their car, the driver of the car on their right, or the passenger of the car on their left.

By this time, you might as well just leave the parking lot and go home, because you've forgotten why you came in the first place.

Of course, you need to hurry home anyway because you might have missed something back at the condo, like someone taking their trash to the garbage chute or having a box delivered. Ah, the drama and excitement of community living.

For forty-some years, people in my parent's neighborhood in Pennsylvania managed to live perfectly full lives without knowing what the guy up the street was doing every five seconds. They went into the house, closed the door and were content to live vicariously through the characters on General Hospital. Not in Florida.

There is a grand obsession with the minutiae of their neighbor's lives, and like the old fashioned game of telephone, the stories flow from ear to ear with the swiftness of a raging river after a hurricane. If someone in unit 105 sneezes at 9:00am, the people in 311 are down there saying, "God bless you" by 9:05.

"Oh, Edna is away and the mailman is here. I hope he knows not to leave her mail. I'll just run down and tell him where she is, how long she is staying, the names, ages and schools of every one of her grandchildren, and the results of her last dental exam."

"Couple J- are renting their place to a new couple. Nice people. of course, they've only been here two hours, but we can tell you that he has an allergy to rare, exotic orchids grown in the Brazilian desert, and that she has always wanted to be an aerial juggler with the circus. We don't know his shoe size or her bra size for sure yet, but we're working on it."

"The K-'s are away, but they are due back any day now. They are from Minnesota. She is a doctor. They like Italian food and body surfing. They have lived here for thirty years. Did we tell you that they are away?"

Try to spend a relaxing afternoon at the pool, and you soon found yourself tag-teamed by various residents who could give the CIA lessons in interrogation techniques.

It actually got to the point where I watched one poor bugger who was visiting try to escape the tide of information by saying they had an appointment. They were literally followed down three flights of steps to their car while being inundated with the details of who was where and what they were doing and with whom. It was like watching a PBS special on predators of the Serengeti. You know the gazelle doesn't stand a chance against the hungry lion, but you root for it anyway.

After three days, between the drivers and the drama, Tim and I were feeling more and more like that poor gazelle. After seven, we were wishing we were a gazelle.