Suburbanland House of Mercyby s@y
image by Ty
image by Ty
A few weekends ago, I was pushing my daughter's stroller—with her in it, of course—around the newest addition to downtown Bethesda, which was cleverly named by some developers and PR gurus as Bethesda Lane. Seriously, you may have heard of Bethesda as the place where the National Institute of Health or the Naval Hospital is. But if you have never heard of Bethesda, here is the lowdown. It is part of the Washington DC metropolitan area on the Maryland side. In addition to serious medical research, Bethesda is also famous for food consumption. It reportedly has the highest number of restaurants per square mile in the entire country. (Or this could be just one of those myths that gets passed from a barely-new resident to a brand new resident every year.)
I just digressed. Let me get back to the story. As I crossed one of the main streets around Bethesda Lane, I overheard a man telling his walking companion—presumably a weekend visitor: "My prediction is that this place will become a destination." What? Seriously? Maldives Islands is a destination. Versailles is a destination. Angkor Wat is a destination. Machu Picchu is a destination. Bethesda Lane—a destination? Oh please! I almost stopped crossing the street to hit that man on his head with whatever I was holding in my hand at that time (which happened to be a bag full of marmalade jars I had just bought) and say: "What did you just say?" Instead, being a model parent, who is very hard at work to set a good example for the malleable mind of my young child, I pretended not to hear this outrageously outlandish hyperbole and kept on walking.
But I kept thinking: welcome to suburbanland! So much for the House of Mercy (meaning of Bethesda in Aramaic). This definitely was payback for living in the nation's most educated small town, which also happens to be the 11th richest location in the country.
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