The Farmer’s Insurance Group
issued a study of the "Most Secure"
places in the U.S.
this month, and I have to wonder to myself – what kind of paranoia
has to take hold of someone that they’re actually willing to take
advice on where to live from a list upon which Boise, Idaho is ranked
second among large metropolitan areas? Seriously? People are so concerned
for their lives and the potential for typhoons and other nigh-biblical
disasters that they need to reference a list of places where shit never
happens? Really?
Are there really people so milquetoast that their fondest desire, the
thing that makes their hips shift in a tiresomely boring man’s approximation
of passion, is to wake up in the morning to headlines that read: "New building has
plenty of room"
or "City will make tree
goal"? Is this
what we’ve come to as a society? Are we on track to become a civilization
of gutless shut-ins and risk averse pansies? This may explain the success
of Netflix, if nothing else.
But, I say thee nay! I can’t
bring myself to believe we’ve fallen so far since the heady ancestral
days of Americans tromping all willy-nilly through any number of dangerous places
they weren’t wanted.
Sure, maybe some folks to our south in scenic Ames, Iowa (number 13
on the list of small towns!), or St. Cloud (#19 on the list of mid-sized
cities and home of
the burning swastika!)
harbor fond fantasies of pastoral days spent marveling at how pants-tighteningly
dull life can be, but not I. No, gentle reader, I would miss the heady
thrill of something – anything
– changing (since I would go bat-shit crazy in a town where the only
change is in the cow to human ratio). I would miss the guessing game
I play every day as I get off 94 headed home and try to figure out what
song the panhandler on the off-ramp is dancing to whilst strumming his
cardboard disabled veteran sign. But most of all, I would miss the schadenfreude.
Because in the sun-dappled Pennsylvania Dutch utopia that is Lancaster
PA (#9 on the list of mid-sized cities!), the Amish are unfailingly
polite, and buggy accidents are rarely fatal.
So, in the words of local philosopher/rapper P.O.S.:
Let me give a little cause
to the flickering sun
Stop, drop, then gimme props,
gimme gunshots
Gimme all that work, gimme
age spots.
Gimme all that hurt, gimme
snapshots.
Lemme get a photograph and
laugh under your bad news
And that, my friends, is why
I live in #214 (out of 379 rated) on the list. Twisted?
Maybe. But tell me, when was the last time a professional football player
entertained Logan, UT residents by getting caught in a compromising situation involving strippers and illegal pharmaceuticals whilst nearby lines stretched for
blocks to see the fruit of a once-local
stripper’s loins?
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