{"id":16975,"date":"2017-04-05T12:43:11","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T16:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=16975"},"modified":"2017-04-05T12:43:11","modified_gmt":"2017-04-05T16:43:11","slug":"front-porch-perspective-2017-spring-trip-to-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/front-porch-perspective-2017-spring-trip-to-florida\/","title":{"rendered":"FRONT PORCH PERSPECTIVE: 2017 Spring Trip to Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Stephen Somerville<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before this column returns next week to the local themes of people, politics and public affairs, below are some unconnected, stream-of-conscious and (most likely) incoherent musings and observations regarding our annual family trip to Florida.
\nThe reflections from our just finished family vacation to Disney World can be broken down into two areas: t-shirts and my rather well known (and soundly ridiculed) prognosticating ability.
\nOne of my favourite pass times when I am in Florida is to read the t-shirts of people at the various Disney World theme parks or on the Cruise ships.
\nT-shirts \u2013 like bumper stickers – say a lot about people. They are a way for individuals to express their individuality and to make a particular statement.
\nWitness a couple of the slogans that I saw on previous trips:
\n\u201cYou can either be: a.) Gun Victim, or b.) Gun Owner \u2013 You Decide\u201d. This kind of caught my attention. The gentleman wearing this shirt was a slightly built, unassuming guy pushing a middle aged woman in a wheel chair. Made me wonder what his story was.
\nI saw a sixty-five year old man wearing a \u201cGive Tiger a break Obama is screwing the whole country\u201d shirt. Although he was supposed to be in the self proclaimed \u201cHappiest Place on Earth\u201d, he did not look at all happy and I did not see a wife or any children with him.
\nOne of my favourite shirts, and I saw two different people wearing them, said \u201cI reserve the right to arm bears\u201d. These shirts had a picture on the front of a huge grizzly bear holding a shotgun.
\nI was not disappointed this year in my continuing quest to find interesting t-shirts.
\nI saw a thirty something year old man wearing a t-shirt that said \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m busy – your ugly – have a nice day\u201d, although he himself was not particularly handsome.
\nAnother man was wearing a great t-shirt; it had a picture of a bride and groom on the front and above it was the words \u201cGAME OVER\u201d. This was priceless. I wanted my own t-shirt. But in addition to the picture of the bride and groom I would include a small boy and the t-shirt would say \u201cGAME NOW REALLY OVER\u201d.
\nA teenage lady was wearing a t-shirt that read – \u201cI am ignoring your text\u201d. Another young lady\u2019s t-shirt said \u201cPeace, Love and Wifi\u201d.
\nA teenage boy was wearing a t-shirt that read \u2013 \u201cTo Do: 1.) Wake Up, 2.) Look Awesome\u201d.
\nMy favourite t-shirt though was worn by a middle aged man. It said \u201cI see you are playing stupid again\u2026and you are winning\u201d.
\nI also got into the act this year wearing a t-shirt that I had picked up in Cayuga, Ontario a couple of years back during a drag racing event. On the front it had a logo of the racing team and on the back it said \u201cI did not want to tell my mom that I was drag racing so I told her I was in prison for twenty years\u201d.
\nThis t-shirt did elicit a number of good natured comments from fellow vacationers.
\nUsually I see a number of political t-shirts on my U.S. sojourn, Last year I saw a couple of \u201cClinton for President\u201d and \u201cCruz for President\u201d shirts, and I also spotted a few \u201cTrump \u2013 Make America Great Again\u201d t-shirts as well as one lady wearing a \u201cTrump – Make America Hate Again\u201d t- shirt. However, this year, I did not spot one such t-shirt.
\nAlthough I did not see the following t-shirt on this particular trip, a number of years ago down in Florida I spotted a guy with my all time favourite t-shirt \u201cNixon and Agnew \u2013 Rested, Relaxed and Ready to Roll in 92\u201d.
\nUsually on these trips ol\u2019 Somerville wears a golf shirt every day, topped off with my Toronto Maple Leafs baseball cap.
\nThe Leafs cap has elicited a few different responses over the years.
\nLast March a guy wearing an authentic Sidney Crosby Pittsburgh Penguins shirt shot me a rather disdainful look while in line at the EPCOT theme park.
\nDuring that same trip while I was sitting on the curb trying to have a quick nap near the Splash Mountain ride in the Magic Kingdom theme park a guy walks by and says \u201cGo Leafs Go\u201d and shoots me a big smile!
\nThe last component to our trip was the NCAA men\u2019s basketball tournament \u2013 also commonly referred to as \u201cMarch Madness\u201d.
\nEveryone down in Florida was talking about the sixty-eight team field and the preparation of their office pool brackets.
\nI am also a big college hoops fan and I was able to catch a number of opening round games on television while in Orlando.
\nWith the tournament down to the Final Four, I predict that the #1 seed North Carolina Tar Heels will beat their counterparts from South Carolina to win the Championship Game this coming Monday night.<\/p>\n

Stephen can be contacted at stephengsomerville@yahoo.com<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Stephen Somerville Before this column returns next week to the local themes of people, politics and public affairs, below are some unconnected, stream-of-conscious and (most likely) incoherent musings and observations regarding our annual family trip to Florida. The reflections from our just finished family vacation to Disney World can be broken down into two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4pN","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-05 16:41:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}