According to Money magazine, the city where I live in Maryland was voted Number Four in the "top 10" places to live in America in 2006. After living in Columbia/Ellicott City for nearly 16 months, I've come to the painful realization that the people who publish those "best places to live" articles obviously don't live in any of those places. Columbia, Maryland, is not one of those places, trust me. I know first-hand.
Quite frankly, the planned community of Columbia sucks. For one thing, the worst drivers in the U.S. are in this state, as many of my Maryland co-workers have pointed out to me over the months. Aggressive driving and excessive speeding is the norm here, and more and more road rage incidents are leading to senseless deaths in this area of the country. It's not a safe place to live.
This morning it was a beautiful sunny spring day as I left my driveway and paused briefly to chat with my neighbor Dan (who had been beaten up last Friday by another neighbor further down on our street). I wanted to see how he was doing a week after being hauled off to the hospital in an ambulance while our neighbor was hauled off in hand-cuffs.
Anyway, I was on my way to work when a brown Explorer XLT cruised through a stop sign in a neighboring subdivision and pulled out into the road a little ways ahead of me. I didn't think anything about it because no one in that neighborhood obeys the stop sign laws, as I've noticed this past year since moving into the area. (Note, if you were reading my blog last year, this is the exact same location where the fat Hundyai driver lives who tried to kill me by cutting me off, flipping me off, and then slamming on his breaks right in front of me. Nice people. This is what "planned communities" give you--a dangerous mix of socio-economic classes all crammed together into one area.)
Mr. Explorer came to the end of that road and cruised through the stop sign there. Several hundred yards later he stopped at the stop light across from our neighborhood shopping plaza, and I pulled up and stopped behind him. Again, nothing was on my mind except the fact that is was Friday and this would be a 3-day weekend (thank God). The Explorer was stopped adjacent to the end of a concrete median that does not extend as far as it should. I was just beyond the end of the median. To my right was the exit lane from the shopping plaza. Behind me and to my right was the entrance lane.
I immediately noticed to my left a woman who wanted to turn into the shopping center. I was not blocking the intersection, however, since the entrance to the shopping center was about a car length or two behind my car.
A nice person in a pick-up truck was stopping about car length behind me to let her through. Simultaneously, the guy in the Explorer ahead of me leaned his head out the window and angrily shouted hateful obscenities at me for "blocking the intersection" (which I wasn't), followed by "you [bleeping]
Yikes. I'm not one of those people who blocks intersections. I'm always the one who stops to let cross-traffic through if cars are stopped ahead of me, and it's safe to do. This guy just let loose on me, mistakeningly assuming I'd blocked the intersection, and his first reaction was to verbally assault me for something that wasn't even any of his business. It's as though he left his house that morning just looking for trouble.
I was shocked at this completely uncalled-for unleashing of anger by my fellow motorist. I never said a word or made a single gesture toward this guy. Instead, when I got to work I called Howard County Police and told them what had happened. They don't care about this kind of thing, though. Obviously they have worse crimes to deal with in my neighborhood.
I swear, every time I go about my business and try in vain to have a nice day here in this crappy place, some jerk has to go out of his way to try to ruin my day. And the sad part is that it's usually someone who practically lives next door to me. What ever happened to being a good neighbor?
This guy obviously has anger management issues, not unlike the guy on my street who viciously beat up my neighbor Dan last week. Turns out, Dan's attacker is a substance abuser who has a long record of nearly 20 aggravated assaults and batteries. His kids are no different - they have a habit of beating up on Dan's sweet, well-behaved kids.
After two such incidents last week, Dan mentioned to these kids' mom that her very young son had thrown a stick at his 2-year-old baby in Dan's own back yard earlier in the week, and that her daughter had clawed up Dan's 10-year-old's face that day. He nicely told her that he understands that kids fight and that he'll keep his kids in line if she'll do the same. He thought that would be the end of it.
Well, apparently this woman (who also has a history of violent behavior), told her crazy husband that Dan was ugly to her about it. Later that evening, the husband marched down our street and assaulted Dan as he was cleaning out his truck. Dan tried to ignore the guy's obscenities and irrational accusations, as this man was obviously out of control. So Dan turned around and went back to what he was doing in his truck. That only infuriated the perpetrator more. The guy demanded that Dan "Look at me when I'm [bleeping]
Dan turned around to face him, and the guy hauled off and punched him in the right temple. He continued beating him in the face, spattering blood on Dan's truck, to point that Dan's right jaw was swollen to the size of a grapefruit the next day.
This maniac had come down the street looking for trouble. He had something iron in his fist, and he had a mini-baseball bat tucked in the back of his pants. Dan's neighbor's 20-year-old son Matt tried to stop the beating. The attacker's response to Matt was, "You wanna piece o' this too, mother-[bleeper]
So Matt called 911. Before I knew anything was even happening in front of my house, there was a fire engine, an ambulance, and five cop cars blocking our street, red lights blazing. This was the third time in the past couple of months that a cop car had been parked blocking my driveway, and someone on my street was being arrested for battery.
Dan has decided not press charges, by the way. He told me this morning that he would feel bad about putting the guy in jail because he just couldn't take a father away from his kids. So we all know who the bigger person is.
This is Columbia, Maryland. Welcome to it. You can have it.
As one of the managers at work said of Columbia when I told her of this morning's bizarre road rage incident, "It's the ghetto of Maryland." She can't wait to leave this sick place either.
2 comments:
I know what you are talking about when it comes to Columbia, MD. I moved here over three years ago from NY. People are maniacs around here. Nobody speaks the language! For those of you not from here, it is English, not Spanish or Korean or whatever these people speak.
Parts of Columbia are just downright unsafe to be in, especially at night. I am not sure if I would feel safer in the Inner Harbor of Baltimore or in Wilde Lake when the sun sets!
Driving is a dangerous sojourn! Nobody uses their signals, as if they are options on cars around here, and nobody gets that option. The people are downright crabby, or better yet, you cannot understand them. See my first paragraph to understand why.
Part of the reason I moved here was for nicer weather. I can definitely say this is the case. Really though, that is about the only benefit of living around here. I guess if you like socialism, this is basically what they tried to do with Columbia, but failed miserably, then Columbia is for you. I think that there might have been more tree hugging hippie types at the Woodstock concert, but Columbia, MD has its fair share of them as well. Too bad socialism doesn't work, just look at France. You think the U.S. has immigration problems, just look at our ally we bailed out of two World Wars. Socialism equates to failure and failure equates to Columbia, MD. Okay, so I got off on a political rant. I now refocus!
I forgot to mention that everything in Columbia is hidden. The hid the mall behind office buildings. McDonald's and Pizza Hut's cannot have their red roofs; they must be brown to blend in with nature. Give me a break. I have to attribute these mundane socialistic rules to the pot smoking hippies who have infested the community known as Columbia, MD.
I drove through good chunks of Columbia on Flag Day and you know what, I did not see ONE American flag. I guess a characteristic of a socialist is that you be ashamed of the the mightly "imperialistic" America. Well, just one more reason to move out this area. I just may have to move out to the midwest where true Americans still roam the countryside!
Advice to all considering a move to either Columbia, Howard County or Maryland in general....DO NOT DO IT! If you need to be in this area to work in D.C., move to Virginia!!!
Enough said...
This is so true. I didn't even know there was a Jiffy Lube on my way to work because I never saw it hidden behind the trees planted when Columbia was dreamed up. No matter, they changed my oil once in my Hybrid Escape and have refused to do it ever since because they are afraid of breaking the plastic seal and don't want to be liable for it.
Post a Comment