The state of Florida is sitting pretty these days.  Having always been a popular vacation destination, the Sunshine State's now also a popular place to put down stakes and escape the craziness, especially the COVID craziness, of blue and purple states.

Freedom presently reigns in Florida: the freedom to do business, attend religious services, and raise your children without lefties sporting fuchsia hair and eyebrow piercings trying to enlist them into the LGBTQXYZ Club.  Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, is a strong but fair leader and potentially our next president.  And, if you needed just one more reason to move there, the state taxes neither income nor inheritances.

Still, before you jump on JetBlue to go condo-hunting in West Palm Beach, realize that the state of Florida, as Steve Martin might put it, is one wild and crazy place!

I know this from personal experience, since, almost simultaneously with me graduating from dental school and moving into a studio apartment in the Bronx, my entire family—-mom, dad, sisters, and bro, and my favorite family member, Rags — moved to Naples, Florida.  Without warning, I might add.

"Was it something I said?" I remember asking them.  They never answered.

But, regardless of my nuclear family suddenly putting over a thousand miles between them and me, I visited them annually and got to know real Floridians and all the crazy things they seem to do on almost a daily basis.

Why are there so many wackos pulling wild, insane stunts in Florida?  I don't know, maybe it's from living in a place where the cockroaches are the size of small kittens and, when it gets unseasonably cold at night, iguanas fall out of trees and occasionally injure pedestrians.

This morning, fully safe from falling iguanas in my chilly little New England town, I read the N.Y. Post and had to laugh, cringe, or cry at all the news stories based in sunny Fla.

The first story, from Naples, a place I know all too well, featured a man who looked like Roseanne Roseannadanna on crack.  When stopped by police, the man was found to possess syringes filled with methamphetamine.  Based on the guy's appearance, no big surprise there, nor were the cops likely surprised to find he was carrying firearms, one in the glove box and one under the front seat — a gun for every occasion.  What did shock the police was finding a baby alligator in the back of the man's truck.  But I ask you: what self-respecting redneck goes out into the world without his truck, guns, drugs, syringes, and emotional support gator?

Half a cup of joe later, I came across the sick tale of a Florida man arrested for pulling a Jeffrey Toobin on an airplane.  It wasn't enough for the guy to flog his dolphin in public — no, he also pulled a Cuomo, fondling the thigh of the shocked woman sitting next to him.  Apparently, the guy was ambidextrous!

But here's the kicker: the guy was 76 years old.  Well past his sexual prime, yet still looking for love in all the wrong places.  How utterly Floridian!

I was still recovering from that story, a fresh cup of coffee in hand, when I read the harrowing tale of a Florida woman who put a four-year-old boy in a clothes dryer and turned it on.  When the boy was later examined in the local E.R., he had bruises around his eyes, ears, shoulders, and lower back, injuries consistent with a significant amount of time spent in the spin cycle.  While the story gave no reason for the Florida woman's actions, we can all be thankful she chose the dryer and not the washing machine!

And just to put a bow on it, the Post had a fourth and final Florida-based article, this simply the story of a missing teenager where police were unsure whether foul play was involved.

So, folks, maybe things aren't so great where you live.  Maybe, like me, you're surrounded by libs with their insufferable and inane lawn signs.  Maybe you're being taxed out the wazoo to give free health care and housing to the never-ending wave of illegal aliens being flown or bused to your town.  Perhaps BLM wrecked your city with their mostly peaceful riots and law enforcement simply looked the other way.

But whatever ails the state in which you reside, think long and hard about relocating to Florida.  Because despite the gorgeous weather, low taxes, and sweet smell of orange blossoms, you'll be dealing with gun- and alligator-toting meth heads, sex-crazed 76-year-olds, toddlers in dryers, missing teenagers, and iguanas falling from the heavens when it's cold out.

Florida's a great place to visit, yes, but I wouldn't want to live there. 

Photo credit: Donkey Hotey.