TWISTS AND TURNS

Nope, I’m not talking about driving. I’m talking about planning. Although I do feel the two are related to some degree. After all if you are going some place you’ve never been it does pay to be prepared before hand.

I know guys get this reputation for being too proud to ask for directions when we get lost, but perhaps if the guy didn’t stuck doing most of the driving that wouldn’t be as big of a problem. At least I know at my house that it the way it works. If my wife and I have to go somewhere, I’m supposed to drive.

I didn’t say that my wife couldn’t drive. Merely that when we go somewhere it sort of becomes my duty to get behind the wheel. Personally I think that is so my wife can devote her time to being sure she points out every thing she thinks I do wrong while driving. Oh yeah that is a real ego builder.

My personal solution for not getting lost and having to stop for directions is to never go anywhere with her I haven’t already been. Notice I said that it was anywhere I personally hadn’t been.

See the way it works for me is that I will go out and try to find the place by myself first. And depending on how hard it is to find, I sometimes have to do that a couple of times.

But you can be darn sure when we go together she won’t be able to gripe that I got lost. Actually this is a strategy I developed only recently. Right after we got lost on the way to this dinner and she told the whole group what a knucklehead of a driver I was. That really thrilled me as you can imagine.

Ever since then I make sure I know how to get wherever we have to be. Which has helped make our conversations in the car so much more calm from my point of view.

I still have to allow for one twist and turn that can happen though. That is when they close a road I’m on and I don’t know a different route. What I do is pretend I know where I’m going then I pull out my cell phone and hit the speed dial to ring my pager. Then I give my wife an excuse about my cell phone battery being low and stop at pay phone.

I have the police station’s number memorize so I naturally call and get directions. If I succeed at it right, I can even lie and make it sound like it was official business.

I know that might seem rather silly to go to all that trouble just to keep my wife from finding out I got lost, but you know I imagine I’m not the first person that ever tried it. Besides anything that keeps us from having a reason to do other than smile I regard as essential to maintaining a good marriage. Someday perhaps I’ll even find somebody that actually worked for! Until then the twists and turns while I’m in the car will always be intentional as far as my wife knows!