Hello, my name is Florida. I'm a proud son of the U.S., although I got 49 other siblings. I'm one of the younger siblings, so I tend to get picked on because of it. However, I'm still a warm and sunny person to be around. Granted I can get a little cold and sad. I'm a crier, I'll admit. In the summer, sometimes all I'll do is cry and I get soaked because of it. I'm on a hit list for some reason. I've had near death experiences of assassins like Andrew and Gustave. I'm lucky that a particularly nasty one, named Katrina, got my sister, Louisiana. I do feel bad for her though. It took her a while to get back on her feet. My warm personality tends to attract people to me, and I take them to stores, restaurants, and hotels and they pay! Which, of course, goes to my kids, which, of course, goes to me. I have a lot of food here. In fact, at the southern tip of me, food can grow all year long! I make so much citrus fruits, second only to Brazil. I also have an abundance of seafood. I was becoming a state, but that would have upset the free state-slave state balance, so my sister, Iowa, became a state with me. However, I seceded after a while and my biggest contribution to the Confederacy was meat, salt, and cotton. I didn't rejoin the U.S. until 1868. After the civil war was when I started to get into the fruit buissness. I flourished until the great depression. Some of my kids became pretty famous, such as actors Burt Reynolds and Sidney Poitier, and singer Jim Morrison. I'm a very interesting state. Gatorade was named after my university's colledge football team, the Florida Gators. The biggest Bald Eagle's nest in the U.S. was mine(1oft. by 20ft.). I have a walking catfish. It's called such because it breathes air and "walks" from pond to pond. I have 40 different plant species that cannot be found anywhere else in the world. My favorite animal's the Florida Panther, my favorite flower's the orange blossom, my favorite tree's the Sabal Palm, and my favorite bird's the Mocking Bird. So, THAT'S ME!