I Lost My Wife, Again
Posted: Friday, March 26, 2010
by Jack H. Schick
My wife gets lost a lot. Not only when I try to explain something to her that has even the least bit of complexity, but, frequently, when she's in an automobile by herself. It's incomprehensible to me. She sometimes gets so hopelessly, tragically lost I'm in awe. It rattles her nerves. She panics and get mad. It's usually "somebody else's fault;" like the people who put up confusing road signs or make maps so hard to read. She gets even angrier when I laugh at her, or yell at her about it. It can be infuriating. It gets expensive sometimes, too.
I waited and waited. You know how that goes. First you get impatient. Then you get mad. Then you get worried; think there's been a break down or a car crash. I tuned the radio to the traffic station to see if there was a tie up on the route she was driving. I called work to see if she'd called there trying to get me, since my cell phone sometimes had no reception. Traffic at the exit was getting heavier as the rush hour were were trying to avoid approached. A couple of times, police slowed down and oogled, suspicious of what I was up to, parked along the highway like that.
After over an hour, I gave up on her and headed for Washington. My daughter was expecting somebody to show up. Ten miles down the road I was still severely distracted with my wonder/anger/worry. Suddenly, parked on the shoulder of the Blue Route with the four way flashers on, I spotted my wife's car. It was like a surreal dream. There she was, in the middle of basically nowhere, halfway between exits sitting along the highway. I pulled over and got out. She had that deer-in-the-headlights look. She was gripping the steering wheel with both hands, knuckles white.
"What are you doing here?" I hollered over the whizzing traffic.
"I got lost," she mumbled. "Don't yell at me."
She hadn't needed to make any turns. She just had to follow the N.E. Extension to the end and get on the Blue Route. It's the biggest exit in the state. It turns out somebody messed her up by putting up an arrow and a sign that said Plymouth Meeting. She got off there. Why that seemed like a good idea, we can only guess. After wandering around in the suburbs and on industrial drives for awhile, she'd decided to give up and try to get home. Fortunately, she went the wrong way then, too. When she saw the signs for Chester and Delaware, she realized she was still lost and pulled over. She said she was praying for rescue when I pulled up. I'm no angel, but I did get her a cell phone.
One year, she got a season pass to the Philadelphia Philharmonic. She's into that Classical stuff. Again, it's not a complicated drive. There is really only two or three turns the whole way to Center City. I got the familiar cell phone call. She was angry. She was lost in some suburban neighborhood near Valley Forge. She could see a Turnpike sign, so it was easy to get her pointed in the right direction. The second time she called, a half hour later, she was panicked. It seems she was headed for Harrisburg instead of Philly. I got her turned around and going the right way again.
It was a Friday so I waited up for her to get home. The concert was over at ten, so I expected her about 11:30--if there were no further complications, of course. I was surprised when she came staggering in the front door about nine. She was sweaty, disheveled and had that glassy--eyed look. She didn't say anything. She when straight to the bathroom and started drawinga bath.
I poked my head in and asked, "What's going on?"
It turns out she got messed up on the Turnpike a couple more times. At one point she decided she needed make a U-turn at the entrance booth. She went through the tolls, crossed the on-coming lanes and exited at a booth on the other side. Since she was just turning around, she didn't bother to take a ticket. The attendant had no choice but to charge her full fare from Ohio. It was a $24 U-turn penalty, basically. She finally saw a familiar route number and, by pure chance, took it the right direction. After an hour or so of just driving along, hoping, praying, she miraculously came upon a shopping mall she knew her way home from. I wrote off the symphony tickets as a contribution, because she threw them away the next day. She wasn't going through that again.
One time I was really perplexed. In fact I suspected she did it on purpose for a while; at least until I saw that familiar look on her face when she finally got home. It was the evening of my company Christmas party. She got lost on the way home from work. Granted, it was dark out, and she'd only worked there a few days at that point, but seriously. How can you get lost on the way home from work? I guess there was a detour sign. Usually you just have to follow the big red arrows and you get back to the way you were going. I got that cell phone call. It was hopeless. I couldn't tell her what to do. She was too confused. She was at the 7-Eleven. That doesn't help much! Which 7-Eleven? She wasn't even sure she was still in Bucks County. I called the boss and told him we weren't going to make it. I'd told him about her before, so he understood.
One Christmas I sent her out to California to visit our daughter. Yes, it's a risk, I know; but, I always give her a folder with maps and detailed directions to wherever she might have to go. Kids never like the thought of losing their mothers. Her gift was a GPS for the car. Before she left, they set it up in her rental car so she could get to the airport okay. The very first place she had a choice of which way to go, the GPS contradicted my written instructions. It wanted her to take the shortest route, right through town. There are too many intersections that way, way too may opportunities to make a wrong turn. I knew her, the machine didn't. My route was a few miles longer, but it was on a limited access highway. There were only a couple places she could go wrong. If she called for help, there would at least be an exit number to refer to, to find out where she was. She figured I wanted her to get home, even if it was just to yell at her for getting lost again. She turned the thing off, followed my directions and never trusted the machine again.
She doesn't often go alone to places she's never been before. If we're going someplace I'm not sure how to get to, I make sure she's driving. She is horrible with maps, so I act as navigator. There's nothing worse than asking what the next street is and noticing she's on the wrong page. I end up having to drive and read the map at the same time. We both get nervous if she has to travel any distance at all, even if it's to a place she's been many times before. There could be one distraction or one detour and she'd be off into the twilight zone again. I wouldn't say she's developed agoraphobia, but she's much more comfortable in familiar surroundings. She prefers the living room couch.
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Top-level comments on this article: (10 total)Hi Jack.I know someone like that. I've often wondered what goes on in her brain. The U turn thing you mentioned is a little scary. One has to ask what made that seem right or good. For sure, your wife has a guardian angel looking after her.My husband is not good with maps either. He just can't seem to orient himself. So mostly he drives and I navigate. But the other day, we had to take my Jeep and so I drove. I had written out the directions in words, very clearly, but still we got a little lost. In the end I had to take a map and figure out where we went wrong.Some people get the navigating gene and some don't.I don't know if you intended your article to be amusing, but I didn't take it that way. I hope that you don't worry overly about your wife.DianneShe asked me to do an article where she was the "fool" rather than me, as is the case in many of my stories. I tried to make the narrator a stronger, more solid character than in, say my Jealous Guy article. In most of my articles, she's been the "anchor' to my Al Bundyesque behavior. Yes, she does have the 'problem', though. It was a bit exagerated and 'cartoon-ized' in some areas.Jack,I can be a little dense sometimes. Thanks for the explanation.Dianne
Haha, very funny. It is worth noting that this problem is obviously hereditary; remember the time our children headed from Philly to Pittsburgh on the east-west turnpike, and ended up in New York??See comment above. Don't go anywhere!
After almost thirty years of marriage, I hold my wife's hand everywhere we go, because when I let go, she shops....Hey, Paul! Thanks for reading and commenting
Thanks again Jsck. Sound like you wife is a perfect candidate for an implanted GPS chip. At least that way you will be able to find her even if she doesn't know where she is.Thanks for reading, and commenting
BOy can I relate to this one. When the Lord was passing out direction finders I was in the bathroom. My sister got two - I should write an article. I was lost yesterday because my favorite route is getting an overpass and I went a different direction. I haven't had so much trouble since we moved to Colorado - Pike's Peak is a great land mark and so far it hasn't moved any....I even did real estate for a time - many there are lots of stories I could write - thanks for writing this one!Thanks again, for reading and commenting
Yes, Jack, you are your wife's angel, though you may want to cut her some slack. Who designed and built roads and streets anyway? Men...and who knows if men would do just as badly driving on roads designed and built by women? ~mogama~Thanks for reading and commenting
I love your wife! She makes me look like a geographical wizard! Actually we sound a lot alike. I always say I need a GPS to get me around the mall. I enjoyed your article. You're a funny man Jack Schick and funny is good.Thanks. I've been called 'funny' in some not so positive ways, too.
Jack! Thank God for the invention of cell phones! I can't tell you how panicked you can become to look up and not know where you are though! I feel for your wife! Please drive her everywhere in the future-you definitely do not want to lose her! Thanks for sharing!Thanks for reading and commenting
Hi Jack!! Just love this article. I'm not the best at directions, this makes me feel better though. It's nice to hear that when it comes to traveling I'm not the only wife that gets on my husbands nerves:)
Jack,
I know how you can solve all her geographical problems! Move to Kane! We never get lost, but take us to a city and we are frazzled, signs definitely are confusing and they never give you enough time to get in the correct lane, etc. So glad when we are back in the boondocks.
Becky
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