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Not since the third grade have I actually flown to Florida.
More recent trips include distinct travel moments: my sophomore year of high school when 13 of us rode the interminable 24-hour journey in a Winnebago--including a rolling drop out of the back bed and a domino-like pile-up on any sharp turn.
Still more intensive was a trek to the Sunshine State with 200 high school band members in a caravan that had the familiar bus scent of orange disinfectant.
I slept four hours with my forehead smashed against the seat in front of me.
Because of all this, the allure of Boeing 727s and airports, waving palm trees and hot sand has beckoned for years.
I thought I had earned a relaxing vacation just off the Atlantic.
Well, not exactly.
The week reached its height of excitement with almost no blood.
I wish I could say I'd been parasailing.
My friend and I were walking at 10 p.m. to a plaza about 20 minutes away. The weather was warm and breezy. We were deep in conversation.
I should preface this with the clarification that when I first arrived, I was warned of prowling alligators.
(In fact, when flying over Boca Raton, the houses seem adorned with bright teal ovals and dark blobs. That's because most pools and decks in the area are sheltered by huge black screens, like baseball cages--all to keep out the tropical wildlife.)
Also, I was told that, if an alligator was on the loose, I should run zig-zag because the lizards can run only in a straight line--they see through tunnel vision.
Which still made me want to wear Nikes with my swimsuit all week. Besides, it wasn't just local myth.
Earlier in the week several people had spotted an alligator. A relative of my friend grabbed his Polaroid, making a special trip to take several pictures (from varying distances) of "Ali," who was crawling on a grassy slope around a lake just one block from my friend's house.
Now there we were, days later, walking at night, assured that Animal Control had done its job.
"*!$#," yelled my friend.
"Huh?" It barely registered.
"The ALLIGATOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"OHMIGOD," I howled.
She swears to have pulled me with her, but all I felt was a hard push--which I instinctively took to mean the alligator was at our heels.
(After all, she was lake-side and I was closest to the hedge solidly separating sidewalk and street.)
What do you do?
Personally, I tried to hurdle the hedge.
Not realizing that it ended inches back and I could have walked past it, I clawed my way through, screaming, expecting razor-sharp jaws to crunch either sandal-clad foot at any second.
Visions from Reader's Digest's "Drama in Real Life" flew through my brain. Would they find my arm or leg alone on the grass? I am afraid of pain.
I stopped halfway though the leaf-and-twig maze.
There was my friend. "Is he there?" I whispered.
No answer. She was doubled over. Laughing.
"Kim, It's OK. Come on out."
"I'm going to hurt you now. You LIED." All the while I'm dragging my scratched-up, sunburned limbs one-by-one out of the hedge.
"I didn't lie--when I looked at the lake I saw this big log and then it moved and it had red eyes ..."
We both walk home shaking. There are small green leaves and twigs in my hair, shorts, shoes.
The next day, driving past we see a gap in the otherwise continuous hedge. And I know that the absurdities of this vacation--like the others before it--more than the beach and dinners out, is firmly imbedded in my mind.