Florida Statutes section 450.061 lists “hazardous occupations” that minors are prohibited from performing. Generally, prohibitions vary little from state-to-state as most have simply reworded the federal standards (e.g., prohibitions against: working in saw mills; operating power-driven machinery; manufacturing and transporting explosives). Certain states may tailor their laws to correspond with the predominant industry therein. Other more proactive states – from a legislative standpoint – may go beyond the federal mandate and add to the tally. Florida, however, takes the cake. I don’t know if Sunshine State legislators listen to a lot of Whitney Houston, but one has to assume their big fans given their commitment to protecting “our future.”

In Florida, minors 15 years old and younger cannot be employed, or permitted or suffered to work in: Alligator wrestling. I know what you’re thinking, “Okay, I get alligator wrestling; that seems sensible. I’m just thankful they didn’t legislate out the possibility of working in a snake pit.” Wrong – snake pits are out too; that and “similar hazardous activities,” whatever those are. Essentially, minors can’t work with reptiles in confined spaces.

You might question the need to actually have this on the books; it’s a no-brainer and the equivalent of codifying common sense. Today’s society isn’t that of which Dickens wrote. Florida is not full of Fagans. Having only been to Florida as a baby, I can’t speak on the working conditions of minors in the state, or how rampant orphan pick-pocketing gangs are, but I do know that normally laws come about for a reason.

It’s not as though as a global society we’ve moved beyond endangering children, e.g., child soldiers, sweatshops, “Little Miss…” beauty pageants. Just this week it was reported that in China a three-year-old had to walk a tightrope over a tiger exhibit. Dumb people do dumb things – that’s why they’re dumb. If we don’t legislate bonehead behaviour, they’ll have kids that will eventually grow into full-fledged thickos and the cycle will never be broken. Legislative inactivity is good news for the Darwin Awards, bad news for Darwin.

Saint Theodore of Amasea atop the "Renaissance Gator"

Years ago I was in Venice, Italy, standing on the balcony at the Basilica San Marco. I looked towards the water and at its edge stood a huge column, and atop it a statue of a man standing victoriously over a slain dragon. It was peaceful, standing there in silence, taking in the view. Then, the South rose again. A family from somewhere east of the Mississippi stood behind me. One of their kids, having spotted the statue, said, “Ma, look, it’s a gator.” His mother, ever so conscious of the role she had in influencing and developing this young and fertile mind, replied, “must be one of them Renaissance gators.”

None of us are old enough to remember, but history books refuse to let us forget the chaos that was Renaissance Venice. Alligators were everywhere.  The canals we know today, full of tourists taking romantic gondola rides, were aquatic feeding pits for one of nature’s oldest creatures. As DaVinci painted The Last Supper, Venetians were supper.  It only got worse after they figured out how to get ashore. There’d be a knock at the door. You’d think it was Giancarlo with the vino, or Giuseppe with the antipasta, but no, it wasn’t; it was a fucking alligator, and he didn’t bring a thing, not even a story. Gators – no sense of hospitaliano.