Locala Sightings

Locala: the topic of today's blog. Where to begin. . . where to begin. There's just so much material. For the sake of keeping things as true to life as possible, I'll simply recall these incidents in the order in which they occurred.

Sunday, May 18th, 7:00 AM,Little Jimmy's 5th Birthday: For his birthday, we got little Jimmy a big boy bike with training wheels. My mother-in-law had spent the night, and we were all up sharing his excitement in the driveway as he showed off his quickly developing biker skills. After making quite a raucous outside with our celebration, I decided it was time to feed the dogs their breakfast. As I stooped to place the now full dog bowl back on the ground, I noticed my mother-in-law staring with a look of horror towards the road. "What in the world?" she uttered under her breath. I followed her line of site to a woman out weeding her yard whose home is catty corner to ours. Yes, weeding your grass at 7:00 AM is odd, but what was truly bizarre was that this woman appeared to be wearing some sort of negligee. I couldn't even believe what my eyes were seeing. "Is she wearing some sort of slip or something?" I asked completely aghast. "I don't know. It looks like some sort of teddy or something to me. . " my mother-in-law stated blankly. Fortunately my son has a very innocent perspective of the world, so his eyes were not too badly scarred as I was quick to usher him.

Sunday, May 18th, 9:30 AM: Driving up the road we noticed a family of five walking beside the road. The oldest child was maybe ten with the youngest probably closer to five. The three kids all carried chips or a candy bar which they were consuming on the journey home, and the mother carried a bag or two of concealed groceries. The father, however, was the most notable one of the group. He was lugging a 24 case of beer on his shoulder. There is obviously no vehicle for these people to drive in to get their groceries, and it's still fairly early in the day, nevertheless, the entire family embarked on a beer run. . . OK, 'nough said.

End of May: The neighbors catty corner to us (opposite direction of Ms. Lingerie) have installed a large inflatable pool in their front yard. Their yard is quite large (maybe 1.5 - 2 acres), but only a small portion immedicately around the front yard is fenced to contain a couple of tiny yapping dogs. The pool is actually located within the perimeter of this fence, making the pool a very convenient yard or so from the front door. I frequently see a woman sun bathing in a lawn chair squeezed right next to the pool. It's a very odd site.

Saturday, June 5th, 5:30 PM, Little Jimmy's Pre-K Graduation Day: I was in a vehicle with my mom and mother-in-law heading home from a festive graduation party. We were at a stoplight "in town" when a couple of pedestrians caught my attention. They appeared to be frolicking as they haphazardly crossed the busy intersection. As they came closer, I was able to get a better look at them. The man was clearly much older with deep wrinkles and shoulder length gray hair, and the woman who was very attractive appeared to be in her mid 20's. The bottom hem of her white undershirt was neatly folded on top of her breasts as she flitted across the highway, midriff a-bare, laughing gaily with her male counterpart. They were a bizarrely matched couple; though not used in the correct context, the phrase "unequally yoked" came to mind. Neither was in their right mind as they were both obviously high as kite off of something or other. This scene wouldn't be so odd to me were it in a big city or a rougher area - but this was small town downtown, where nothing of any note should be happening.

My point, how can there be so many strangities that I myself actually cast my own eyes on when there are so few people? Even living in Orlando or the greater Orlando area, I didn't ever notice such a high incidence of fruityness (for lack of a better word). It seems that there is a disproportionately high quantity of oddballs here. . Nothing describes these individuals better than the term: Locala.