Read Online I'll Mature When I'm Dead by Dave Barry - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Dave Barry
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gunfire than the Battle of the Bulge, although to be fair most of it is happy gunfire.
But as long as you avoid these dangerous situations, you’ll be perfectly safe in Miami, provided that you watch out for traffic. This is not as easy as it sounds. In Miami, traffic can appear anywhere—on the streets, of course, but also on sidewalks, as well as in parks, front yards, restaurants, hotel lobbies, and swimming pools. You may think I’m exaggerating, but that’s only because you don’t watch the local TV news in Miami, which routinely features images of cars that have been driven into what we usually think of as non-automotive environments such as buildings. At risk of reinforcing an unfortunate stereotype, I have to point out that many of these cars, at the time of impact, were being piloted by senior citizens possessing the same level of awareness of their surroundings as a salami sandwich.
To cite just one example: In 2008, police in Miami stopped a seventy-three-year-old man who was driving a Chevrolet Cobalt. This in itself is not unusual; police often, for one reason or another, stop older drivers. What was unusual was where they stopped this man:
Runway 9 of Miami International Airport.
Really. The man had somehow, without noticing it, burst through an airport-perimeter gate, and when the police caught up with him, he was driving on the runway, apparently unaware that he was doing anything wrong. (“Is there a problem, Officer?”) This incident really makes me wonder about the priorities of our airport-security people. I mean, when I go to an airport, they won’t let me near an airplane with shampoo . And this guy was out there with a Cobalt . 14
My point is, when you’re in Miami, you should be very alert if you’re in a place where a car might hit you, which is pretty much anywhere below the fourth floor. And you definitely shouldn’t attempt to drive yourself in Miami, because odds are you’d make some foolish tourist mistake such as stop for a red light, which means you’d be rear-ended by a vehicle going upwards of eighty miles per hour driven by a motorist with no insurance but a minimum of two firearms.
That leaves public transportation. Here there is good news and bad news. The good news is, Miami does have public transportation. The bad news is, if you ride on it, there is a chance that you will encounter dangerous marine life. I say this because of an incident that occurred in 2009 on Miami’s Metromover, which is a free automated “people mover” that makes a loop around downtown Miami. One evening at rush hour, two men boarded the Metromover with a live, six-foot-long nurse shark . The men had apparently caught the shark in Biscayne Bay and were using public transportation to take it downtown to sell it.
One of the people who saw the shark, according to the story in the Miami Herald , was a twenty-four-year-old musician named Mae Singerman, who was getting ready to do a show on the Metromover platform. The Herald quoted Singerman as saying:
“The door opened and the shark was sitting by the front of the door. I didn’t see a reason to call police. It’s Miami. Stranger things have happened.”
True. Still, not everybody was blasé about the shark. One of the commuters who boarded the Metromover, Sandy Goodrich, sent me an e-mail stating that, as a native Miamian, she thought she had seen everything, until she saw the shark.
“Unbelievable,” she wrote. “Only in Miami!” Attached to her e-mail was a photo she’d taken with her cell phone, “so that my son would believe that there was actually a shark on the train.”
She said the shark was definitely alive, although it was not doing well. Sharks are hardy creatures, but they do not thrive on public transportation. The men got off the Metromover a few stops later and took the shark to a fish wholesaler, offering to sell it for $10. The wholesaler declined, and the men left the shark—which at this point had kicked the
But as long as you avoid these dangerous situations, you’ll be perfectly safe in Miami, provided that you watch out for traffic. This is not as easy as it sounds. In Miami, traffic can appear anywhere—on the streets, of course, but also on sidewalks, as well as in parks, front yards, restaurants, hotel lobbies, and swimming pools. You may think I’m exaggerating, but that’s only because you don’t watch the local TV news in Miami, which routinely features images of cars that have been driven into what we usually think of as non-automotive environments such as buildings. At risk of reinforcing an unfortunate stereotype, I have to point out that many of these cars, at the time of impact, were being piloted by senior citizens possessing the same level of awareness of their surroundings as a salami sandwich.
To cite just one example: In 2008, police in Miami stopped a seventy-three-year-old man who was driving a Chevrolet Cobalt. This in itself is not unusual; police often, for one reason or another, stop older drivers. What was unusual was where they stopped this man:
Runway 9 of Miami International Airport.
Really. The man had somehow, without noticing it, burst through an airport-perimeter gate, and when the police caught up with him, he was driving on the runway, apparently unaware that he was doing anything wrong. (“Is there a problem, Officer?”) This incident really makes me wonder about the priorities of our airport-security people. I mean, when I go to an airport, they won’t let me near an airplane with shampoo . And this guy was out there with a Cobalt . 14
My point is, when you’re in Miami, you should be very alert if you’re in a place where a car might hit you, which is pretty much anywhere below the fourth floor. And you definitely shouldn’t attempt to drive yourself in Miami, because odds are you’d make some foolish tourist mistake such as stop for a red light, which means you’d be rear-ended by a vehicle going upwards of eighty miles per hour driven by a motorist with no insurance but a minimum of two firearms.
That leaves public transportation. Here there is good news and bad news. The good news is, Miami does have public transportation. The bad news is, if you ride on it, there is a chance that you will encounter dangerous marine life. I say this because of an incident that occurred in 2009 on Miami’s Metromover, which is a free automated “people mover” that makes a loop around downtown Miami. One evening at rush hour, two men boarded the Metromover with a live, six-foot-long nurse shark . The men had apparently caught the shark in Biscayne Bay and were using public transportation to take it downtown to sell it.
One of the people who saw the shark, according to the story in the Miami Herald , was a twenty-four-year-old musician named Mae Singerman, who was getting ready to do a show on the Metromover platform. The Herald quoted Singerman as saying:
“The door opened and the shark was sitting by the front of the door. I didn’t see a reason to call police. It’s Miami. Stranger things have happened.”
True. Still, not everybody was blasé about the shark. One of the commuters who boarded the Metromover, Sandy Goodrich, sent me an e-mail stating that, as a native Miamian, she thought she had seen everything, until she saw the shark.
“Unbelievable,” she wrote. “Only in Miami!” Attached to her e-mail was a photo she’d taken with her cell phone, “so that my son would believe that there was actually a shark on the train.”
She said the shark was definitely alive, although it was not doing well. Sharks are hardy creatures, but they do not thrive on public transportation. The men got off the Metromover a few stops later and took the shark to a fish wholesaler, offering to sell it for $10. The wholesaler declined, and the men left the shark—which at this point had kicked the
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