By: Adam Kapel A Hurricane, over a billion cicadas and an unusually large number of unpleasant people waited for me in Baltimore. Of course I didn't know that when I stepped off the plane and into the sweltering heat of the airplane-loading ramp at nine o'clock in the evening. If my wife hadn't had a handful of bags, boys and barf bags she would have turned and walked right back into the plane. But as is the custom, we proceeded to get our 15 pieces of luggage, dragged them to the rental car location 25 miles away and began the drive to our new home. At a quarter to midnight my wife, two sons, cat, dog and I stepped into our fully furnished apartment that was the size of our previous master bathroom. This wasn't the strong start I was hoping for in Baltimore. Our new home, for the moment, was a corporate apartment in the bustling non-city of White Marsh. White Marsh, contrary to how it sounds, is not a skin disease but a location north of Baltimore that is named for a Shopping Mall. Everyone knows where White Marsh is, but I am not sure that it is exactly a city, or suburb or any other kind of recognized municipality except that you can shop there. I thought of it then as something akin to purgatory, only worse. I should probably mention why we were putting ourselves through this immediate hell. It was all for good reason, really. You see, I was promoted at the company I was working for. I was a young 33 and now a vice president in a Fortune 500 corporation in charge of global marketing and strategic development. The role required us to relocate to corporate headquarters in Baltimore. Yet despite the obvious perks of rank, money and prestige the decision to accept this position and move cross-country was perhaps the hardest I have ever made. Prior to the promotion, I was in charge of a major technology account in the state of Washington; Mr. Gates runs the shop. They make software, you might have heard of them. I worked from home, mostly in my pajamas, traveled around the world, loved my client and was generally having a marvelous time of it all. There is a liberating feeling that comes with a three time zone, 2500-mile separation from the aggravations of corporate headquarters. We were living in a community north of Seattle called Mill Creek. Although not originally from the Pacific Northwest, I fancy myself its favorite adopted son. We are originally from Minneapolis, where I lived and worked for our first 30 years of my existence. I'd wanted out to Seattle since I visited the area in my teens where we boated around Puget Sound, experienced the Space Needle and visited the World Expo in Vancouver. Great city, Vancouver, actually my favorite city in the world. But I digress. Mill Creek is a hidden gem of a town that wraps around a golf course about 20 miles north of Seattle. A small community, the nicest folks in the country live there and the pace of life is just right. If you didn't know it was there, you would never find it - just the way we liked it. The point is, life was good in Mill Creek. Real good. But, the pull of executive fame, fortune and adventure proved too much and we capitulated, leaving family and friends in our wake. So, we did our best to settle into White Marsh. I start my new job and my wife starts hers, visiting every shop in the vicinity. Because, well, that's what you do in White Marsh. And anyway, the entirety of our possessions are in a storage facility so cut her a break. Within a week, Hurricane Isabel scores a direct hit on Baltimore. I thought this was good and bad news. On the one hand, if I were really lucky, the hurricane would wipe this god-forsaken place into the bay and I could go home. On the other hand, if I were really unlucky it would just prove that I had truly found a tiny piece of hell on earth and this was just the beginning. I was unlucky. Baltimore weathered the storm and our "discomfort" continued to grow. I promise not to spend my allotted words detailing all of the things I don't like about Baltimore, although I could - trust me. Needless to say, it got worse and really never got better. For example, within the month, my wife personally witnessed a racial verbal beating in a dry cleaner so nasty if you put it on the Soprano's it wouldn't be believable. We thought it a one-time incident until she took similar - and personal - abuse from a librarian once we moved into our new town 30 miles north of Baltimore. A librarian! In the suburbs! Are you kidding me? Who are these people and what is it about Maryland that creates a populace so unhappy that even librarians are ready to hand your ass to you? We experienced similar incidents at our kids swimming lessons, the grocery store and daily in the midst of Maryland traffic. But, life progressed in our new house in the town of Forest Hill. Kids went to school, I went to work and I dare say we almost fell into a likeable little rhythm of life. Note the term almost. Considering that there must be bylaws in many eastern states to ensure a form of constitutional unpleasantness, we too were not allowed to stay happy. Two months into our punishment, my then four-year-old was diagnosed with a nasty ear infection due to allergies from what is considered the worst air quality in the country (look it up). Then my three-year-old was diagnosed one month after that. Ultimately my boys took turns experiencing ear infections for the next eight months. These weren't your garden-variety earaches, mind you; these were four-doctor visit, Claritin-prescribed, nothing-will-solve-this-but-yanking-our-their-adenoids and even that most likely won't work, professional-grade infections. They must have hurt like hell. One doctor actually said the only way to stop the ear infections was to move away from Maryland. He was joking. We didn't think it was funny. We thought the man was a genius. The final straw came when Maryland started to scratch its 17-year itch. What, you say? |
Cicadas, the most fearsome looking insect you have ever seen. Big black bodies and huge orange-red eyes. They fly around like bumbling idiots trying to eat or mate with anything that resembles a cicada. To them, this might include your car windshield, my calf or any hair more than shoulder length. The really creepy part is that they literally emerge from the ground en masse like a scene from an entomological Dawn of the Dead. This spectacle occurs every 17 years with scientists and fifth graders alike giddy with anticipation. Well, we were promised a bumper crop and the Cicadas didn't disappoint. They were everywhere. It was awful, but they do make a great sound when they bank off your windshield at 70 miles per hour.
Thank goodness there are natural resources to help contain them. The best of these are the birds that eat like kings during this six-week invasion from hell. The worst of these are called cicada-killer wasps. I had never known fear until I saw these things buzzing around my backyard bushes. Honestly, it sounds like a helicopter is landing on the roof and looks like fifteen black and yellow cigars are taking bombing runs along the hedge. These cicada-killer wasps are so frighteningly huge they actually made me wish for the cicadas back. I believe, if given the chance, they would have carried off one of my children, or at least the cat, to their evil underground lairs. When I say evil, by the way, I am not joking. I believe that the cicada-killer wasp must be the only truly evil creature in nature. You see - they don't die. In that I mean you can't kill them. They create little murderous caves in the slopes of your lawn. As opposed to the reasonably harmless honeybee that spends its time gathering and dispensing pollen, these minions of the undead (I am convinced of it) buzz around until they find something flying by minding its own business, like a cicada, dragonfly or Boeing 737. They attack it and carry it back to their little tunnels to Satan where god-knows-what happens to the poor souls they've captured. I spent hours trading stories with the guys at work about how they tried to flood, poison, bury and do everything short of offering up a human sacrifice to appease and/or remove them. Nothing works. Think about that next time you are wondering who is truly at the top of the food chain. Thoughts of going home started creeping into every conversation. I couldn't have a beautiful, ear infection-ridden child carried off by some sick science-experiment of a wasp to its den of sadism only to have two thousand frantic cicadas trying to get out of the way bouncing off my face and jumping into my mouth as I chase the winged devils that stole my boy while my wife is on the phone with the police being told she was a rude, Italian bitch and "we don't need your kind here anyway!" In addition, we lost our poor little dog to a heart ailment during this time and while I don't want to make light of that situation, I'm convinced it was in part due to the cicada-killer wasps. They certainly raised my blood pressure and I wasn't the one forced to go outside to relieve myself every hour. So, as far as I'm concerned, Baltimore took my dog, the damn wasps took my courage, the people have no heart and my wife lost her mind - we were living in the Land of Oz! I might be exaggerating all of this a touch, but not much. Paradoxically, my work was very challenging, rewarding and egotistically satisfying. I really love marketing, had a great team and felt like I was making important contributions to the business. My influence and responsibly was increasing and, honestly, I found that I am pretty good at what I do. Work as a senior executive really changed how I looked at business and I learned a ton. In addition, we had a great house, plenty of money, some really cool new friends and compared to most you could say things were absolutely going our way. But as you can see, we weren't really having a great go of it. And cicada killer fueled ranting aside; my children's ear infections were really preying upon my mind. We made the decision to leave. Perhaps the second most difficult decision I've had to make. I reached out to a firm that I knew of in the Seattle-area, sent a resume, flew out for an interview and had an offer before I knew it. But here's the catch… there is always a catch. The position was for a job I had already done a number of times before in my career - account management. My current job as a marketing VP had shown me I could operate effectively at the executive level. The offered job in Seattle was for far less influence, responsibility and money. Was I ready to do that? It's one thing to talk about hating Baltimore and going home, it is quite another to sacrifice job status and salary. Well, the firm I was considering joining was young, energetic, in a growing industry and led by a CEO I had tremendous respect for. If I could climb the ladder in one place, I could certainly do it again, right? And leaving a great job to make life better for your family is the honorable and commendable thing to do, right? Those questions were so easy to ask and so hard to answer. Screw it! I made the decision, put in my notice, sold the house, shipped our stuff, packed the cat into a bag and boarded the plane for Seattle. I was heading home. I was scared shitless. I was leaving the best job I ever had. I was not sure if I could do it again at an all-of-a-sudden old feeling 35. I was missing my family that had left three weeks earlier. I was hoping the cat could just quit whining and enjoy the flight. I was thankful that drinks are free in business class. And I was wondering if I made the right decision. Six months later - the new job is going all right. We live on a friendly little island and I ferry to work each day. I haven't spotted a cicada killer since we got here (I don't think they can fly over the Rocky mountains). We are back near family, and love our new house and schools. My kids haven't had one ear infection since leaving Baltimore. By the way, my client is Gates' little software firm in Washington - you may have heard of them. Who says you can't go home. |