When you see a fork in the road...

Let me just say this: there are no wrong turns.  No bad directions.  Though there are plenty of missed cut-offs that spring into view at the last minute, causing an additional twenty miles of driving in the “wrong” direction until a suitable turnaround is found. But it’s all good, provided one is inclined to taking the long view.  

Technically speaking, everyplace we go is a piece of the pie; in fact, probably more than the beautiful, well-maintained buildings and parks and breweries and restaurants, this place called home (America) is defined by strips of fast food offerings, Walmarts, gas stations, and tire stores.  Dusty, dirty places people need to go, rather than spit and polish want-to-go places.  And, typically, when one gets lost, one ends up in the dirt.  

You’re probably thinking the preceding is a preamble to some momentous story about getting lost.  If so, you’d be partially correct.  Though I’m far too generous a soul to point fingers, or accuse Rebecca of willful deceit and/or subterfuge.  Nothing willful about it.  No premeditation.  In fact, were she able to pull off some of her more convincing acts as artifice, I’d be the first to congratulate her on her genius.   

“Turn left here.”  

“Left?”

“Yes! Get over, you need to go left.” (Voice rising.  Tone suggestive of what one might use when it’s discovered the dog ate the rotten chicken carcass from the trash under the sink and then threw it up gift-like onto your new, pink poodle skirt.  Not that I’d ever leave my poodle skirt on the floor, but you get the idea.) 

So I work it as best I can, cutting off some dude in an asphalt truck, feeling like some last vestige of my worth as a human hangs in the balance of getting across those three lanes to the left lane when, “No.  Wait.  I mean right.  Take a right.  Oh, forget it!  We’ll just have to go around the block.”  

Here’s the thing:  It happens a lot.  And every time it happens there is absolute conviction in her delivery. As such, I pretty much always fall for it.

And because there’s not a lot of up and down in driving, it’s mostly a left-right thing.  When she says right she really means left.  Some series of synapses are clearly crossed. When she says left, she means right.   She won’t dispute this; it’s truer than war.  More constant than poverty. 

What is painful to me as the recipient of said synapse-crossing is two fold, really.  One is the absolute conviction with which each false direction is delivered.  Not just conviction, either, but that Driving Miss Daisy edge she conjures up when delivering her false directions.  And second is the fact that I pretty much always fall for it.  Until recently, that is.

Fool me once, shame on you…  

I don’t think there was a final straw.  No ultimate F-up.  Rather, something gave way in my own set of synapses which allowed me to not take each little piece so seriously.  Missed that right turn?  No worries, there will be another.  If not in Louisiana, then in Texas.  Plenty of road.  I guess you could say I’ve come to taking it all in stride.  

“Take a right here.”

“Now, when you say right, you mean in this direction, yes?”  As I indicate a right-ward motion of the arms, all while singing past the appointed turn.  Which, of course, pisses Rebecca off.  Soon enough, I’ll slow down and pull into the parking lot of a tire store or a scrap metal yard.  Come to a stop.  Maybe take in the sound of the cars grinding past, of a semi-truck throttling down, or a puddle of oily mud beneath my tires.  I’ll try to focus on something elemental, like my breaths, before getting back on the road and trying it again.

Every time we leave the comfort of home we open ourselves to the promise of wrong turns. In this we gather up our pearls of wisdom—if, that is, we’re fortunate enough to see them for what they are.