who gives a flying f*
It was a perfect plan that, in hindsight, made no sense. I convinced my rule-following, 10-year old daughter to skip two days of school so that we could spend 24 hours in Miami. A mother-daughter trip (actually, if I’m honest, we were just tagging along on my husband’s business trip). Yes, I have become that cliche wife (blame it on COVID).
I don’t know what I was expecting, but my unassuming daughter learned the following while strolling around South Beach:
the f* word is the most flexible word in English language (you can put it before or after any word and it will make total sense)
beaches are for spontaneous twerking contests
drug deals are done casually, in open-air, in the middle of the day
alcohol should be drunk out of a sturdy trash bag, passed around amongst friends and total strangers
and fresh, sea breeze actually smells like marijuana.
I had no idea it was spring break in Miami. Nor that the city had declared a state of emergency because things were completely out of control. Our taxi driver said, it’s as if people are here to reenact scenes from Sodom and Gomorrah.
My daughter and I were equally baffled the next morning, when I had an overpriced avocado toast and my daughter had an even more overpriced wrap with Fendi logo embossed on it. I thought we were walking into a nameless but trendy breakfast nook, but apparently Fendi now sells expensive coffee and food to tourists like us, who can’t afford their bags or fur coats.
I mean, who are these people twerking in the middle of the street, while others are embossing Fendi logo on a spinach wrap across town?
Do you ever have this twilight zone sense of being in a surreal place where you are the odd one out (even though you are absolutely convinced that you are the average Joe and totally normal)?
My biggest open secret is that I’m petrified of flying. Even a slight turbulence transforms me into the most devout Catholic. If you ask me, we were all on the verge of dying from extreme turbulence that lasted practically the entire flight when we flew back to Washington DC. If you ask my daughter (or anyone else on that flight), it was just another average, uneventful journey. She watched Sponge Bob in her bored, distracted way, while I held onto her hands tightly, praying Hail Mary and feeling sorry for my two boys at home who could be imminently mother-less.
I swear to you, I was the only normal, sane person surrounded by crazy people slugging alcohol out of trash bags while others calmly read books in the midst of death-defying turbulence. Cue in the Twilight Zone theme music….