Justin Time For The Holidays

Coming home to South Florida for Thanksgiving is kind of like pissing yourself on your favorite roller coaster. Even though you still remember every turn, you can always bet on it going by too quick and being warmer then you expect.I once had a history teacher junior year that stopped class one day to deliver a valuable lesson for those of us who planned on attending college in the Northeast. ‘Once you get up there, people don’t know the deep South from South Florida,’ said the venerable Mr. Wilkner. ‘So things that seem normal to you and I, like a town and school named Plantation, might strike some people as a little odd.’ The moral of the story: ‘When people ask where you are from, just say Fort Lauderdale.’Like Wilkner said, there is a world of difference between the regions of the Sunshine State. They can be roughly broken down into three categories with one-sentence summaries. North and Central Florida (from the panhandle until Orlando, not counting the theme parks which operate within their own fiefdom): the unclaimed love child of Alabama and Georgia. South Florida (from Palm Beach until Miami): a large population of Hispanics, Jews and the elderly mixed with the occasional lost redneck. And finally, The Unincorporated Provinces (South Beach and the Keys): magical lands that allow only gays, models, hippies and P. Diddy within their borders. Anyhow, first on my list was old South Plantation High School.You know, maybe it is just the Broward County school system, but between my alma mater and my brother’s high school the walls are covered with murals and banners plastered with propaganda like ‘There is no WRONG way to do the RIGHT thing.’ Granted, it doesn’t hurt to try and shape young impressionable minds during this tumultuous time in their lives, but as I walked the halls again I couldn’t help but think it was overkill. This kind of coverage would make the faculty adviser for Berlin High’s class of ’41 think it was a little much.Aside from that, though, things were just like I left them. A smattering of kids seemed genuinely engaged in expanding their minds while the rest were either obviously jonesing for a cigarette or so wasted from ‘liquid lunch’ that they were as coherent as Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown each reading every other word of the Constitution.Home sweet home.

Justin Young is a junior newspaper major. E-MAIL HIM AT JRYOUN02@SYR.EDU.