Stupid, Little, Blue, Blinking Dot!

The worst side of a person comes out when they’re lost. And the devil himself seems to appear when you are lost and late. Trust me, I know. I’m not lost often, but when I am… It’s not pretty.

But, let’s back up a bit. Have you ever been the passenger when the driver gets lost? When that happens, this is something of the dialogue that goes through my mind.

                “What’s his problem? It’s not like it is that hard to find the place. Why is he getting so upset? It gets so much harder to find the place if you are frustrated. Calm down man! We’ll find the place, it’s not Atlantis or anything! Uh oh… I think he is about to have an aneurism…”

And then, you make the monumental mistake of saying something to the driver in an effort to calm them down. And now, you are the headless passenger, cringing in fear and hoping that this place just pops up out of nowhere because you only have so many limbs you can spare.

As a general rule, I am an excellent person to take along on a road trip. For many reasons, but mainly because I don’t really use my own floor space because I always have my feet tucked up underneath me. And, because I can keep up a cheerful attitude through traffic, being lost (as long as I am not driving) and coming up with interesting snack combos to eat during the drive. (One downfall to having me along on a road trip is I drink an inordinate amount of water and require rather frequent bathroom breaks…)

But! When I am driving, and I am late and I am lost… I don’t even know myself.

Example: This past weekend I was the Maid of Honor at my best friend’s wedding. They were having a wedding dinner about 40 minutes away from where I work. I had never heard of the place, and so I was trusting in Google Maps (not always accurate, but better than nothing). I have this handy little app on my phone that gives me step by step directions, or I can see a map with myself being this little, blue, blinking dot moving along the road. The route is in red, so if I get off course I can definitely tell.

I wasn’t too worried about the first part. I jumped on the freeway and knew which exit to get off of. But, I was late. So I wasn’t in the best frame of mind. I got off the freeway, managed to stay left at the fork, and while the light was red I read the next step in my directions: “Drive 2.2 miles and turn left on 1700 W”. Only… I read it as, “Drive 0.2 Miles and Turn Left”. So I did. And I got hopelessly lost.

I drove around, looking for some kind of sign or directions or something and ended up at a random Wal Mart. I looked at my map to see how far off track I was. My little, blue, blinking dot was quite off track. So I started driving in the direction that I thought would bring me closer to the red route, only to see my little blue dot getting farther away from my personal yellow brick road.

I turned at the next street thinking it would  get me back on track, only to turn even farther off route. At this point I was very frazzled and saying some interesting things. No swear words, quite yet. More like, “Where in the name of St. Agnes am I?!” or “No! bad little blue dot! Go the other way!” But, to no avail.

I decided to pull off the road to have my route redone and give me very specific instructions. I decided to turn right at the next road. At the stop sign,  I had the directions recalculating. It told me to make a U-Turn. At this point, I had turned right, so I got into the left lane only to discover that there was no U-Turning. Nope! It was straight onto the freeway for me!

I had now turned to grumbling and moaning and beating the steering wheel in impatience. I was not very happy. I tried to hold it together, got off at the next exit, got back on the freeway and back on track. The stupid little, blue, blinking dot kept on telling me how very off track I was. I wanted to smash that stupid dot.

I made it back on track, the little blue dot happily following the red line, and read the directions carefully at every red light. I was panicked beyond belief that I was going to be terribly late and either walk in on a speech, not get any dinner or have many looks of scorn given by the dinner-goers. Luckily, the Bride and Groom were nearly 45 minutes late (which is actually quite typical of the two of them…)

I vowed within myself to read directions more carefully and to leave earlier. It just isn’t any fun to feel lost, to hate blue dots and want to yell at all the other cars that life just isn’t fair! And the worse part of the whole thing? I don’t have working AC. I had done my hair, and with all the extra time in the car it had gotten more windblown and sweaty than I had ever planned on and was practically past saving. So, I gave my toast with crazy-lady hair, half melted-off make-up and a smile. At least I made the Bride look extra good, right?