When science fails.

Welcome back! 

Yesterday started out very lovely, I had coffee with a dear friend and we skipped down memory lane. Skipped is probably not the right verb, we more stumbled and limped down much of that lane.

After coffee I dropped him off at school so that I could use his car.

For those of you who have not had the experience of constantly driving a 24ft RV around small downtown streets in big cities, you may not be able to appreciate the beauty of being able to drive a small zippy sports car for a day. There was so much excitement and potential perfection wrapped up in my plan for the day. 

I got very clear and concise directions back to my friend's house and gleefully headed there.

I was driving for about 15 minutes when I realized that the abandoned lots and farm land that I was passing didn't look familiar. My friend lives in a pretty densely populated neighborhood in North Central Austin, so when I started passing livestock I realized I needed to turn around.

I took the first right I was able to because the street I was on had inexplicably become a one-way. The turn I took spun me around an industrial complex for about 15 minutes and dumped me back out on a fairly large, busy street, but by then I was completely turned around and couldn't tell if I was parallel to the street I wanted to be on. 

For those of you who are directionally challenged I'm sure that you are used to this sort of thing. You probably stay very calm, and have systems in place. I have always been unnaturally good at orientating myself and therefore have no such systems in place. The only other time I have ever been all the way lost is when I got off on the wrong bus stop when I was a nanny and led two young children on an "adventure walk" that lasted 2 hours. That time I didn't have any provisions and I think the children caught on that it wasn't a game when I made them pee on some lady's driveway and started quietly sobbing to myself as we walked. 

So, back to yesterday. I took a right and then a left and then another right, all the streets were relatively straight. Scientifically impossible as it seems, I ended up exactly where I started. I tried going left, right, left and again ended up at the exact same intersection. At that point I was near panic, not only was I lost, I was defying science. 

I tried mixing it up with a series of lefts and rights and straights in order to prove my hypothesis that science no longer existed. My hypothesis failed though and at the end of my experiment I couldn't even find the intersection that earlier I couldn't seem to escape. So once science failed, I panicked. 

I tried to soothe myself with the affirmation that no one has ever been lost enough to die cold and alone in a city, but I left my cell phone with my boyfriend so I couldn't say the affirmation with any real authority. I drove around hoping for something to look familiar in this city that I've only been in for two days, but shockingly, it all looked foreign. I started asking people at stoplights how to get to where I was going.

The first guy I asked told me it was behind me so I made an illegal U-turn. I asked a lady at another light just to confirm that I was going the right way and she told me it was the other way. This same scenario happened literally four times. 

The panic got worse when I realized I had to pee. I was sure that my friend would forgive me for having to pee in the car once they found me, dead three or four days later. I was just about to let go of my bladder when I remembered that I could just pull over and get out of the car. I asked the gas station attendant where to go and he gave me very detailed directions which I reconfirmed with him three times. 

I was significantly more calm, my bladder was empty and I had actual directions. Seven minutes later, I realized the directions were wrong and I was driving on a street whose name changed every other intersection. 

I found a 711 and tried to buy a map from a very itchy cashier who couldn't stop scratching, but they only had maps for Dallas/Ft.Worth. So I bought a phone card instead. I had been lost for about and hour and a half and thought that my boyfriend had probably already called all the local hospitals, found nothing, and was already in stage 2 of the mourning process. I called once, no answer... I called again, no answer. Great, he'd already finished the mourning and was at a bar trying to replace me. I tried calling again, but my entire $5.00 phone card had been used up. (That phone card company will be getting a strongly worded letter from me soon.)

So, I did the only logical thing. I sat in the car and cried. I sobbed violently actually. After that I dried my tears, told myself that everyone had to die sometime. I made myself feel even better when I remembered that my boyfriend had already found someone else and that at least I wouldn't leave him heartbroken and alone. I dried my tears and just started driving aimlessly. An hour later I found myself back where I dropped off my friend, followed the directions he gave me and was home in ten minutes.

My boyfriend was in the shower, barely noticed that I was two and a half hours late. At least I didn't have to learn to love his new girlfriend as my sister-wife.

The moral of this story is simple; when science fails, panic.