All Roads Lead To Rhome

Daddy prided himself on his superior navigational skills. Bless his heart. Those “skills” were purely a figment of his imagination. He was the stereotypical male who would never dream of asking directions. “I know these roads like the back of my hand,” he said. I don’t think he had ever examined the back of his hand, but it did look a bit like a road map of Dallas.

It never failed that when we left my Grandmommy’s house in Oak Cliff (which was only thirty minutes from our home in Grapevine) my Daddy got us lost. Whenever traffic got heavy, Daddy decided to take a “shortcut.” He called it , “The Scenic Route.” My mother always heaved a sigh, but she knew better than to comment. The road always meandered off in a direction Daddy didn’t expect … although he would never say that.

An hour later, all four of us kids would be bouncing in the back seat.

“When are we gonna be there, Daddy.”

“It’s just around the corner.”

“How far are we from home?”

“Not long now.”

“Daddy, are you LOST?”

“I know exactly where I am. Wherever you go, that’s where you are.”

Invariably, we wound up in Plano, Texas. These days, Plano is a booming metropolis from which no human can navigate. Back then, it was just another tiny Texas town. We all sighed whenever we saw the lights of Plano, because we knew that Daddy could find his way home from there. In another thirty minutes, we would finally be able to go to the bathroom and hop into bed. A thirty minute drive almost always became a two hour one.

Of course, my siblings and I teased my Daddy mercilessly about his tendency to wind up in Plano. We started asking, “Daddy, when are we going to be in Plano?” We knew if we reached Plano it was another thirty minutes. This infuriated Daddy, but it was our job and we did it well.

These days I have a little more sympathy for my Daddy’s bad driving. You see, I have begun “channeling” my Daddy in a very eerie way.

It’s not that I won’t stop to ask directions — I don’t have a problem at all with stopping at a convenience store (especially because by the time I do stop I usually have to go to the bathroom). No, my difficulty is that I have almost as much navigational skill as a box of rocks.

I don’t know North from South from East from West. I can stare directly at the sun, and know the time of day, but it doesn’t help me at all. Don’t tell me to “turn west” or to “turn at Such and Such Road,” because my eyesight is so poor that I can’t read the roadsigns. I need bigger landmarks, and I only understand directions like, “Turn left at the Dairy Queen.” I only can do that if I’m holding one of those rocks in my left hand … so I know my left from my right.

I travel so much that some friends have suggested that I get a GPS system. However, if I had to listen to some sultry woman’s voice telling me what to do, I’d probably start an argument with her — just like I do with the automated “checker” at the grocery store. I’d wind up arrested for littering when I threw the dadgum thing out the window.

Even though I am well aware of the fact that I don’t navigate well, I’m lured by “The Scenic Route.” The last three times I have gone to a town west of Denton (and I only know that it’s “west,” because somebody told me) I have fallen prey to that lure.

As I’m driving on the country highways, I see a road that looks like it should go the right direction. I take it, and of course it is “as twisted as a dog’s hind leg,” as Mamaw used to say. Suddenly, I’m totally lost. However, I don’t eventually wind up in Plano like Daddy did (because that’s “east,” I’m told). I wind up in the tiny town of Rhome, Texas.

But, hey! I know my way home from there, and it’s only another thirty minutes before I can go to the bathroom and plop into bed.

Related posts:

1. Plumb Tuckered Out
2. Roaming Around Rhome
3. Don’t You Just Hate It When…
4. Bath Time Blues
5. Breaker, Breaker, 1-9

Tagged as: bad drivers, Daddy, GPS systems, humor, Plano Texas, Rhome Texas, Talkin' 'bout Texas