So, no, they aren’t young, and they aren’t traditional mermaids. But man, oh man. Get these ladies in the water, and they outshine the Currents by far.
Which makes sense, really. They are the mermaids of yesteryear; they were vintage Florida kitsch, before you could find it on every street corner. They were the forerunners of Weird Florida; they were the metric by which every non-alligator-related tourist attraction would be measured. No mermaids? Well, you better have one hell of a parade or gimmick to match these ladies. I’m talking six-foot-tall talking dog gimmicks, because once you had seen these sirens of the deep, what was next?
Even in their sixties and seventies, these ladies are the queens of the deep, and watching their reunion shows sandwiched between the Current shows, I can’t help but want to be part of their world. Because their watery world beneath the glassy spring isn’t just a mermaid world, it is their world, their sisterhood. And that sisterhood is Florida, in a big way.
They tickle the turtles that come to eat their banana (if you’ve never seen the show I’m not even going to try to explain that; suffice to say, turtles like bananas–A LOT) and they have a free and easy fun in the water that seems just out of reach of the Currents’ grasp. They are the best parts of Florida, tails and all. They move with a grace and elegance that belies their age and proves that no matter how much some things change, some things never can. Just like Florida remains immutable in the face of its constant metamorphosis, these ladies prove that indeed, once a mermaid, no matter how you age or change, you are, at your core, always a mermaid.
