Florida was ___________.

I still can't come up with the right word. Lots of people have asked and I've faltered through every answer. Yes, it was fun -- at times. And yes, being away from 8th graders was glorious. Yet there was something sad and unsettling, too, about standing in line with the entire populations of Britain and the mid-West, waiting to get a glimpse of a manatee in its glass cage, to buy postcards or keychains--to hang suspeneded for those few seconds, weightless and free above the world below, before hurtling down the track to whatever loop or spin comes next.