Las Palmas

Unless you are quite the world traveler (and most definitely before the age of media inundation) there are some things in this great wide world that you may have never seen in person.  I recall my nieces, then very young who were born in the Philippines where my brother was stationed, being totally amazed that ice (hail) fell from the sky during a storm one day.  We had to stop them from going outside while the hail was falling because they wanted to see what it felt like – they probably wouldn’t have liked the sensation.  I remember my anthropology professor in college who was born and raised in Hawaii; somehow in a lecture he told us how he didn’t know what a fireplace was when he had to identify it on a standardized school test as a boy.  He was trying to tell us that just because someone has never seen nor experienced something that doesn’t lessen their intelligence.

The first time my very young offspring saw a palm tree was during a road trip to Disney World.  We had stopped at a gas station and one was there on the lot.  They circled and patted the tree examining it like little explorers before asking me what was it.  At the time I believe the only palm trees they had ever seen were in books or in cartoons.  That memory still makes me smile but now palm trees mean I’m someplace warm and hopefully – but not always – with an ocean nearby.