{"id":23468,"date":"2019-04-04T19:52:01","date_gmt":"2019-04-04T23:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23468"},"modified":"2019-04-04T19:52:09","modified_gmt":"2019-04-04T23:52:09","slug":"front-porch-perspectives-2019-spring-trip-to-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/front-porch-perspectives-2019-spring-trip-to-florida\/","title":{"rendered":"FRONT PORCH PERSPECTIVES: 2019 Spring Trip to Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

Before this\ncolumn returns next week to the local themes of people, politics and public\naffairs, below are some unconnected, stream-of-conscious and (most likely)\nincoherent musings and observations regarding our annual family trip to\nFlorida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nreflections from our just finished family vacation to Disney World can be\nbroken down into two areas: t-shirts and my rather well known (and soundly\nridiculed) prognosticating ability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my\nfavourite pasttimes when I am in Florida is to read the t-shirts of people at\nthe various Disney World theme parks or on the Cruise ships. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

T-shirts \u2013\nlike bumper stickers – say a lot about people. They are a way for individuals\nto express their individuality and to make a particular statement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Witness a\ncouple of the slogans that I saw on previous trips:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can\neither be: a.) Gun Victim, or b.) Gun Owner \u2013 You Decide\u201d. This kind of caught\nmy attention. The gentleman wearing this shirt was a slightly built, unassuming\nguy pushing a middle-aged woman in a wheelchair. Made me wonder what his story\nwas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I saw a\nsixty-five-year-old man wearing a \u201cGive Tiger a break, Obama is screwing the\nwhole country\u201d shirt. Although he was supposed to be in the self proclaimed\n\u201cHappiest Place on Earth\u201d, he did not look at all happy and I did not see a\nwife or any children with him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my\nfavourite shirts, and I saw two different people wearing them, said \u201cI reserve\nthe right to arm bears.\u201d These shirts had a picture on the front of a huge\ngrizzly bear holding a shotgun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was not\ndisappointed this year in my continuing quest to find interesting t-shirts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nI saw a thirty something year old man wearing a t-shirt that said \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m busy \u2013\nyou\u2019re ugly \u2013 have a nice day,\u201d although he himself was not particularly\nhandsome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I saw an\nolder man wearing a t-shirt that said, \u201cI am an Enginner, Angineer,\nEngenner, I am Good At Math!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I saw another\nman, probably early 20s in age, wearing a t-shirt that said: \u201cDid I ask for\nyour opinion? No, I didn\u2019t think so\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another man\nwas wearing a great t-shirt; it had a picture of a bride and groom on the front\nand above it was the words \u201cGAME OVER\u201d. This was priceless. I wanted my own\nt-shirt. But in addition to the picture of the bride and groom I would include\na small boy and the t-shirt would say \u201cGAME NOW REALLY OVER\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A teenage\nlady was wearing a t-shirt that read – \u201cI am ignoring your text\u201d. Another young\nlady\u2019s t-shirt said \u201cPeace, Love and Wifi\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A teenage boy\nwas wearing a t-shirt that read \u2013 \u201cTo Do: 1.) Wake Up, 2.) Look Awesome\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My favourite\nt-shirt though was worn by a middle aged man. It said \u201cI see you are playing\nstupid again\u2026and you are winning\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also got\ninto the act this year wearing a t-shirt that I had picked up in Cayuga, ON a\ncouple of years back during a drag racing event. On the front it had a logo of\nthe racing team and on the back it said \u201cI did not want to tell my mom that I\nwas drag racing so I told her I was in prison for twenty years\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This t-shirt\ndid elicit a number of good-natured comments from fellow vacationers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Usually I see\na number of political t-shirts on my U.S. sojourn, Two years ago I saw a couple\nof \u201cClinton for President\u201d and \u201cCruz for President\u201d shirts, and I also spotted\na few \u201cTrump \u2013 Make America Great Again\u201d t-shirts as well as one lady wearing a\n\u201cTrump – Make America Hate Again\u201d t- shirt. However, this year, I did not spot\none such t-shirt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although I\ndid not see the following t-shirt on this particular trip, a number of years\nago down in Florida I spotted a guy with my all time favourite t-shirt \u201cNixon\nand Agnew \u2013 Rested, Relaxed and Ready to Roll in 92\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last\ncomponent to our trip was the NCAA men\u2019s basketball tournament \u2013 also commonly\nreferred to as \u201cMarch Madness\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone down\nin Florida was talking about the sixty-eight team field and the preparation of\ntheir office pool brackets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am also a\nbig college hoops fan and I was able to\ncatch a number of pre-tournament games on TV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I predict that the Duke Blue\nDevils will win the Championship Game a couple of weeks from now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nStephen can be contacted at stephengsomerville@yahoo.com<\/p>\n\r\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-23468","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\/p3D2k4-66w","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 18:04:15","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\/23468","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=23468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}