Wherever You Go There You Are

When you’re in one place you think of the other. I always notice for example that a mall in Florida isn’t like a mall up north. Our malls don’t have ice skating rinks in them yet well do I remember my little niece climbing into a wee skating skirt such as you’d put around a 20-inch Christmas tree and heading off to the mall. Up north, you want to skate, just fail to look down for four months of the year. Up north, you want an early spring you paint it on your windows like this lady is doing at the neighborhood food store.People in Florida look different too, more burnished-seeming, even in winter, the people of color a well as the white folks. Up north all winter we look like a bunch of root vegetables, he’s a potato, I’m a parsnip. Sometimes I look down at one of my knees and think I’m a mushroom. I’m even checking for those specks of black  you get on mushrooms,  bits of  humus they say it is but we all know it’s really what the night-soil gatherers brought down from the mountain, only reduced now to a harmless powder.Southerners are fatter too, the state with the most obesity being Mississippi, no doubt on account of the fact that there’s a Waffle House on every corner. We don’t have that, not in Massachusetts anyway, and I see now where our state boasts the very lowest rate for obesity in the nation. So what DO we have on every corner? Nail salons. Day spas where you can get a tan sprayed on you by young women in low-cut tops. And of course right now a million storefronts offering to help you prepare your taxes. Don’t forget those taxes people! And remember to note that whatever city, state or kingdom you find yourself in today there’s always the chance you’ll round a corner and run into a sight like this one, ahhhh!