You know that Carly has a boyfriend who lives in Connecticut right? Well, she's been angling for us to let her drive down and visit him for awhile now. Deb and I actually drove her down there so that she could go to one of his school dances about a month ago. It's about an hour away and Deb and I chilled at Mohegan Sun - an Indian Mega-Casino right by his house.
Anyway, Carly has wanted to be able to go down there herself and we finally gave in. I set her up with the GPS to guide her there and everything went fine. Well, a couple of days ago, she made plans to go down there again after school. Since the GPS was in my car, it was my job to remember to take it out of my car and leave it for her before I left for work in the morning. You know where this is going don't you?
Right. I forgot to leave her the GPS. So, she calls me about it but there's really nothing I can do. She figures she can just go old school and get directions from MapQuest and be OK. She has already driven there after all. Fine, no problem.
So I'm in the car driving home from work at the end of the day when - Riiingg.
Carly (Sobbing): Dad, I'm lost.
Dad: What happened?
Carly: I don't know.
Dad: Where are you?
Carly: I don't know, somewhere in Worcester.
Dad: What street are you on?
Carly (Angry and Sobbing): I don't know.
Dad: Do you see any street signs?
Carly: I don't know.
Dad: What do you see around you?
Carly: Just buildings.
Dad: Are you on 290?
Carly: No. I was but I got off and now I can't find it.
Dad: You have to find out what street you are on.
Carly (full breakdown): I can't! I don't know where I am! I don't see anything!
So I'm trying to figure out what to do to help her. Worcester *is* a difficult city to drive in. It's got some sort of Bermuda triangle thing going on I think - things just don't seem to make sense. Let's see, I can't really go get her if she can't tell me where she is so there's no point in driving there. Hmm, what to do...
I arrive home with her still on the phone driving aimlessly around Worcester so I get on the computer and bring up MapQuest to see if I can figure out where she is. She finally gives me a street name but I can't really figure out where she is on that street or which direction she's going. I finally tell her to find a business and pull into the parking lot. She pulls into Metro Dental Group or something like that so I Google it, find their home page, which just happens to have their address, and pop that into MapQuest - Bingo! I get her going in the right direction and talk her through every turn - using my best "Miss Garmin" voice by the way - "ReCALCulating". I get her back to the shopping center that she knows and hang up with her on her way back home - the trip to CT scuttled.
She gets home and recounts how she must have gotten on 395 North instead of South and realized her mistake when she started seeing the buildings of Worcester instead of the CT countryside. She didn't want to get off the highway in Worcester so she kept going and turned around in Shrewsbury. She got off the highway when she saw a sign for Uxbridge but then got totally lost trying to follow that route. Worcester is "the big city" and a touch grimy compared to the sticks of Uxbridge so she got a little freaked at being alone and lost in a dicey area. I think she's going to pay a little more attention to driving after this little excursion.
