Floride and Floridians
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Florida Smile Design This is a sum-up, a taste, a bite out of my trip to Florida where my grandpa lives. He lives in a house designed to make people happy, down a road lined with malls and recurring patterns of fast-food places, in a state that makes walking a hazard to your life.
Florida really could be a beautiful place. The Everglades are, I’ve been told, a beautiful and rare swampland of wildlife. Geologically, the state rests upon limestone rock, which disolves and forms natural sink-pools which attract wildlife and vegetation. Just down from my Uncle Brian’s house you can go Indian canooing down Wekiva Springs, a totally still and secluded river filled with sunbathing turtles, blue herons and otters. The area is reknowned for its oak trees that reach a circumference larger than 10 feet. The tree’s are then known as Majestic.
And this is where my Uncle Brian lives, yet his wife, or my cousins, have never visited Wekiva Springs. I have always liked my Uncle Brian the most out of all my uncles. He might have been the one that made me cry the most when I was younger, but he was always the one to challenge the norm, to overstep the mark with the best intentions, and that has always taught me something.
When I was born my grandpa had a stroke. Now he’s over 80, getting rather old and cranky in his wheelchair. Grandpa has lived in a house at the bottom of Brian’s garden for a while, but recently his health has started to get far worse. Hence my trip out to florida.
So here is my grandpa, sitting on a chair designed to help him, in a town designed around the atomobile, in a state renowned for its sunshine and smiles. He still needs to get out of his chair so his muscles get excercie, the automobiles have destroyed socialising as we know it; you don’t see anyone walking or talking on the streets, and the sunshine means 0º is reported as freezing and the smiles are filled with fake teeth.
Besides all this, he’s still smiling (with all his teeth), and quipping jokes with a sparkle in his eye.
