Florida is weirder than I remembered.

I am back from Florida, and I feel I have been divinely appointed to come back to you with this message: Florida makes you strange. Of course, you all knew this. But as with so many things, I never really thought about it until it directly affected me. And by then it was too late.

The photo is of the book that my father was reading when I arrived. 23 Minutes in Hell. It came highly recommended by a guy with a wholly insufficient Jesus-hat. I skimmed the book long enough to know that the title might well be referring to the experience of reading it. The author has not very good sentence-putting-together-ness. Which means he apparently made a lot of money with very little skill. Which makes me jealous and actually more offended than I am when I consider his absence of even a blush of theological integrity.

To his credit, and to my relief, my father thought it was probably unlikely to be a true, visit to Hell’s actual postal code, as claimed by the author. Still. Just knowing that my father felt this book might be worth reading caused me to lose a little bit of sleep.

Throughout my visit, I steered assiduously clear of conversations that might lead one to speculate on the identity of the Anti-Christ. Fearing that Barack Obama might be a candidate. Or Michael Phelps. Or Tom Bergeron. Or me with this mannish haircut of mine.

One never wants to believe that their parents have gone all apocalyptic. But I suppose when you’re in your eighties, a big hootenanny End of the World is probably not as threatening an idea as it once was.

Oh. Then there’s the marshmallow fluff. Also pictured. It disappeared shortly after my arrival. My parents, over the course of two weeks never mentioned it. I never mentioned it. It made no detectable appearances in the food. The marshmallow fluff situation may be another sign of the apocalypse. But just as with wondering what it must be really like to spend a half hour or so in Hell, some questions are better left unexplored.