If Wishes Were Houses

If Wishes Were Houses

I like to think I sometimes live on the edge: just call me a risk-seeking type of gal. Like, when I deliberately push the gas tank as low as it’ll go, daring the empty fuel tank symbol to BEEP yet one more time. Like, dashing out six hours before The Big Bash to try yet one more time to find a dress. No matter that I have at least three to four respectable outfits ready and waiting…
A round trip to and from the Dolphin Mall later, I ended up with no new dress, but at least with a full gas tank. I cheated, though: I’d been only three-quarters empty.
Adventure, as I found out, comes in many guises: careening off Tamiami onto SW 127th Avenue, the road began to swerve just past Belen Jesuit Prep (but not before, Heaven forbid). I found myself in the midst of a development in what must have until fairly recently been not much more than mere swampland. Cookie-cutter houses: so what else is new?
How about an assortment of roosters, hens, and chicks parading around the backyard of a sizeable corner lot? A block or two down, two horses jolted me so much I almost stopped the car.
Horses? Oops, I mean, houses. A life-sized bronze statue of a horse was prancing in front of one, and a more docile specimen was grazing on its asphalt pasture to the side of the other. Frederick Remington couldn’t have done any better.
And then two thatched huts came into view, protectively embraced within their respective backyards. Competing one with the other, like two preening and crowing roosters preparing for a fight.
I get the feeling we’re not in Florida anymore.