… but this one probably didn’t.
I should have known I was in trouble as soon as I left the house. I needed to be somewhere only twenty minutes away at 4:15, and I was leaving at 3:45—giving me a good ten minutes to spare. This never happens.
“Hmmm,” I thought to myself, “I’m not sure if I like the idea of being early and just sitting around waiting. Maybe I should take a longer route there.” And I almost did, before reminding myself, “Hey, I’m never early to anything. Why not savor this moment. I’ll just make sure to drive exactly the speed limit the whole way there—that should use up a little more time.”
So I did. I got on the freeway and I concentrated on fastidiously following the speed limit; I made it a little game with myself. (I daresay cars around me did not appreciate this little game.)
Pretty soon I started thinking about where I was headed: to get a haircut. Now, getting my hair cut requires me to summon up a bit of courage; not only because it involves interaction with other human beings (and we know that doesn’t always go so well.), but because I have only been to a hairdresser one other time in my entire life. On top of that, this was going to be the first time I would have my hair cut by a guy. Would that be weird?
These are the kinds of thoughts that were going through my head, combined with my obsessive watch over the speedometer… as I drove past my exit.
At first, I refused to believe what had just happened. No, that wasn’t my exit… couldn’t have been… there’s no way that I just drove by it… Oh, bother, it was my exit. Well, I’ll just turn around and go back.
And this is where my important life lesson for today comes in: it turns out that there’s this funny thing about freeways… you can’t turn around on them.
As this fact began to sink in, I admit that I started becoming a tiny bit irrational. “What?? I can’t just… turn around? This is the 21st Century, people! We can speak to our toasters and tell them to do things for us! I should be able to TURN AROUND ON THE FREAKING FREEWAY!!!”
Then I saw a sign on which the first town listed was at least an hour away—and that’s when I almost burst into tears. Suddenly my “going to be a bit early for my haircut” had turned into “going to be horrifically late for my haircut.”
In actuality, the next exit off of the freeway was ‘only’ 10 miles from the exit I meant to get off at… which, when you count the time it took me to drive back after I had turned around, gave me plenty of time to consider the sheer stupidity of what I had done.
The blog-worthiness of the whole situation did not escape me, of course, even at the time—nor did the irony of the fact that the one time… the ONE TIME I was going to be EARLY for something… I ended up still being five minutes late.
The moral of the story is: Don’t try to be early to anything. You will just end up bungling it.
Right? 
March 28th, 2007 at 6:54 am
If you just follow the speed limit all of the time, it doesn’t take as much concentration.
But it’s true; the other cars never do like it.
March 28th, 2007 at 8:31 am
oh dear.
it does make for another good blog post though…..grin
March 29th, 2007 at 5:29 am
I had the exact same thing happen to me on a freeway last weekend, why aren’t there places to turn around??
I had visions of heading directly to a town 2 hours away before remembering exits are there so people can escape the roads Driving is tough.
April 2nd, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Isn’t it nice to know that interstates are actually required to have turn-arounds every twenty-five miles or so? In the middle of nowhere, they have exits that don’t lead anywhere but back onto the freeway in the opposite direction. Of course, then you have to go 25 miles before you can turn around again.
July 2nd, 2007 at 4:49 am
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