You wanna see something really scary?

In my childhood I met some monsters right in my own neighborhood, and as I grew older and ventured out I discovered there were bigger and nastier ones beyond my usual stomping grounds. Some I sought out on purpose, but there was one in particular that I eventually found myself very reluctantly facing. One that I always hoped I’d never see in real life…It was as if life said to me “You wanna see something really scary?”.

One afternoon on a cold, rainy winter day I was driving someplace, where I do not recall. Only that I was going to a part of the city where I had never been before. In those days paper maps were all that was available for navigation, and so I had plotted my course earlier that day. I headed south on the Baltimore Beltway in the driving rain, glancing at my map ever so often. I don’t know if I overshot my exit or I had simply gotten lost, but I didn’t yet realize that I had wandered way too close to something dreadful. I was traveling on a section of the Beltway south of the city that was, to me at least, uncharted. Not unlike an explorer in some sort of mysterious urban wilderness that just might just harbor unknown and terrifying things.

Thus, I drove on, having no idea of what was to come. My map seemed to show I was on the right path, but my surroundings were unfamiliar. The road began to curve more sharply to the left, having deviated from the relatively straight path I had been on for a few miles. Little did I realize that once I went beyond that bend, I had unwittingly consigned myself to facing the nightmare that was lurking just outside of my line of sight.

And then it appeared upon the horizon – the object of my dread – looming menacingly in the distance thru my rain streaked windshield. “Oh, No! Oh shit! It’s the Key Bridge!” I thought as I instinctively backed off the gas. What stupid mistake did I make to put myself into this predicament? How did I wind up heading right for the very thing I never ever wanted to see in real life? I had no idea that this frightening bridge was actually PART of the Beltway! I drove on, glancing nervously from side to side, looking for a way out or to reverse course. But there was no where to turn back or cross to the opposite side. And so I was trapped! Pulling off onto the soon to vanish road shoulder would only delay the inevitable and prolong the angst. As I drove on, the pavement played out onto a dwindling spit of land, leading me ever closer to the bridge. Its huge and ghastly humped tangle of massive ashen grey iron struts echoed the color of the gloomy sky. This dreadful image will be forever burned into my mind. The road appeared to rise at a terrifyingly steep grade, and I felt like the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz as he headed reluctantly towards the Wicked Witch’s castle. There really should have been a sign somewhere before the bridge – “I’d turn back now if I were you”!

*****