What Is It About Palm Trees?

There seems to be something mystical about them that loosens people's grip on reality.

Courtesy of Treehugger

My wife told me about a Russian friend living in New York City. She worked in a children’s hospital as a nurse. Earning nearly $150,000 and residing in a rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn, she had 5 weeks of paid vacation a year, wonderful health insurance, and a strong union protecting their rights. She moved to Miami last year.

She now earns $35 an hour. Her new hospital has no union, and the health insurance barely covers a quarter of what the one in New York did. She pays triple for rent and now has a car expense. Her only opportunity now to work with children is when they come to the emergency room with bullet wounds. She told my wife she helps pull around ten bullets a day out of people, many of them young. Then, she startled my wife.

“I still love it here. I can see palm trees from my kitchen window.”

She can see palm trees from her kitchen window. What kind of logic is that? I don’t come about such proclamations easily. Preferring to ponder such things when I realize the conclusion at which I arrived is some that is way too off-the-wall or could make me sound like some crackpot that most people would go out of the way with their shopping cart in a supermarket to avoid, I will only let my theory be voiced when either alone in a car or high on my morning coffee. But, I will be damned if I am not onto something here.

Aliens left The palm tree on Earth to weed out the humans they don’t want messing with the cosmic gene pool. Some lizard-like, frail, brainy fellow or gal on another planet in another galaxy came up with the “palm tree test.” The palm trees were put in place to attract people like the woman described above. I am sure many reading these words have people who moved to Florida because of the palm trees. I am sure many have even heard others brag about the palm trees. When we arrive at a place where palm trees are common, many of us do one of those excited double-takes, “Huh, is that a palm tree? Wow.”

Las Vegas has palm trees. Is there anything normal about Las Vegas? Los Angeles has palm trees. California has a lot of them spread over the state. If you live in any of these places, I am not saying you are inherently bad or inferior. I am merely wondering out loud what the f*** is up with the shit that goes on in places where there are a lot of palm trees?

Florida, for me, is a hell on Earth. I have been there many times and wouldn’t say I like it. I opted out of a job because it would have required me to move to Miami. Sorry, it’s just not my cup of tea. If you spend any time on YouTube, the crazier things happening in our country always seem to be happening in Florida. DeSantis has turned the state into the fascist version of what Trump envisions for America. Trump lives in Florida, and palm trees are all around his Mar-a-Lago.

Men and women go to Walmart and Publix wearing the absolute craziest outfits. When I once wrote an article criticizing how the way Americans dress shows disrespect for others in society, it was Floridians and one guy from Las Vegas who trashed for being stomping on 1st Amendment rights! Wtf, right?

I am sure this theory could be tested exhaustively even by comparing things like crime, gun violence per capita, teen births, failure to graduate high school, drug overdose rates per capita, and so many other data points, but if I invested a month of my life into such an endeavor it would permit you, dear reader, to ask: B, do you live near any palm trees?

For the record, I don’t.

There is rhyme or reason why people in Florida and other states do the things they do. Why do they so voraciously vote against their own interests the way they do? Why do they leave wonderful careers to earn less in a more dangerous and unhealthy environment like a Miami emergency room?

There can only be one answer. It’s the goddamn palm trees.