In my line of work I do a lot of traveling, most of which finds me in our nation’s capital, Washington, DC. Now normally, I have no problems traveling through this fine city (usually because when we arrive in DC, I am the passenger and not the driver), but this last trip into the city was indeed, a trip! Where do I begin? Luckily, I had a trusty sidekick with me for this particular jaunt (more on him later) or I may have very well lost it and left my car parked in the middle of Massachusetts Avenue. Okay, on to the story . . . the travel from South Carolina to the City of DC was very uneventful. My trusty sidekick and I discussed a plethora of topics and the time went by swiftly. It was when we actually hit DC that the proverbial stuff hit the fan. First, the GPS system that we were using was either drunk or just plain suicidal because she (yes, I know that it is not a real person who speaks to you through the GPS, but for all intents and purposes for this article I am going to place the feminine pronoun on it; kept attempting to make us go the wrong way on a one way street! Luckily for my friend and me, my new glasses do work, and I could see that following this advice was not the way to go. Also, she would tell us things like “take a right on the third street after the round-about.” I live in South Carolina. We don’t have “round-abouts.” We have curvy roads! And then she couldn’t count because once you took the third right (both my friend and I counted) she always had to recalculate…and she was the one who told us to go that way initially. UGGH!
As we drove aimlessly through the city with cars continuously honking behind us and people darting in front of the Ford Focus while I was still moving forward, I noticed that there was more swearing and cussing going on than that to which I am usually accustomed. Upon further investigation, I realized that all the swearing and cussing was coming from my car and even more shockingly -- from me. I have never cussed so much as I did on this particular trip to DC. Add to this that my bladder was now screaming because of the humungous soda I drank and you can see why I was not a happy camper! Now for the citizens of DC, I have but one question to ask and that is this, “Why the devil, do you people dart out in front of cars that have the right of way?” Really people? Seriously? I came so close to hitting at least three people on my travels through DC, two on the road who walked in front of my car, and the third one in the car beside me (remember I told you that I would speak more about him later and I did not forget).
As I am attempting to listen to GyPSy (that’s the name I give to all GPS’s) I also have the personification of a back seat driver who in this case is not sitting behind me, but beside me. And in his infinite wisdom he decides to tell me things that are obvious such as, “the light is green,” “there’s a stop sign”, and my favorite “You have to learn how to laugh more.” As he continues to talk he begins to sound more and more like the parrot Iago, in Disney’s Aladdin and it grates on my nerves. Now, at this point I am already on edge and can see everything that he is pointing out (remember, I also mentioned that I have new glasses) so his repeatedly telling me these things is making me want to reach out and punch him in his throat, but I don’t for two reasons: Reason one, the dude is one of my best friends and he really can’t help but take over in these types of stressful situations. His job, like mine, is to deal with craziness that may crop up from day to day and he is used to handling these types of things. The second reason that I did not strike him is because I realized that I am the exact same way as a passenger and I too want to take over in stressful situations. I just didn’t realize how annoying it is to the person driving until this last jaunt into DC.
I don’t know how, but eventually we finally found our way out of the city and made it to the hotel. Once we got there, I didn’t want to do anything except call the wife and let her know that I had arrived safely, eat the leftover food that I had from lunch, take a hot shower and climb into bed, and luckily for me I did just that and slept soundly…until around 3:00 a.m. when some more excitement occurred, but that dear reader is yet another story. See you next time, and remember always look for the funny.
PS, for those of you who are awaiting an answer as to if I received some of my cool points back from the last episode, alas the answer is no, but I am trying everyday to get some back.
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