This nation is so friendly that the leading cause of injury is getting passionately embraced by strangers.

People - just weird people are attracted to Miami. And they come there not for serious reasons, usually.

Here in Miami, on weekends, amusement-seekers will come to the marina, set up folding chairs, and spend a highly entertaining day watching boat owners perform comical maneuvers such as forgetting to set their parking brakes and having their cars roll down the ramp and disappear, burbling gaily, below the surface.

I am much more likely to care about someone trying to be funny and give them some credit for whatever he or she did that was remotely funny than I am to be mused by somebody declaring this isn't funny, that isn't funny, this sucks. If you want to write humor, you're going to have to get used to that.

A short distance away is the Tidal Basin, ringed by cherry trees that every year produce flowers, an event to which Washingtonians react as though it were the Second Coming of Christ.

Your friends love you anyway.

A child can go only so far in life without potty training. It is not mere coincidence that six of the last seven presidents were potty trained, not to mention nearly half of the nation's state legislators.