Andrew's shortcut

Andrew decided to take a shortcut from the temple to my Auntie Arlene's house. To his credit, the shortcut did work. It cut off a lot of time from our preplanned route.

However, we missed the exit we were supposed to take to get to my aunt's house.

"That's the exit," I said.

"No, that's for the Beaches and Downtown."

"El Centro is my aunt's exit."

"No, El Centro goes to 'the center,'" said Andrew, "It's like Italian. It means downtown."

"No it's like my aunt's exit and we just passed it."

"I'll take the next exit."

"I don't know how to get to her house from the next exit."

We passed the next exit and the next and the next. When we finally got off the highway, it was only onto another highway. And then when we got off that highway we were on another highway. When we finally got off the highways we had no idea where we were.

I, being the woman of the relationship, openly admitted this. Andrew, however, would not.

"Why don't we stop and ask how to get back on the freeway. You have no idea where we are."

"I know exactly where we are," he said.

"No you don't! We've never been here before!"

"If we just keep driving in the direction we'll have to run into the freeway eventually," he insisted.

California is built all around hills, so we couldn't keep driving in one direction because hills kept getting in our way. Granted, it wasn't quite as confusing as driving around in the Middle East, but we certainly were winding around a bit.

True to his word, we did eventually come across the highway. We just couldn't figure out how to get back on. There didn't seem to be any entrance and we were in the middle of a residential area.

We kept driving around, because Andrew couldn't stop to ask for directions, and luckily enough we stumbled across the exit, nestled snug between two apartment buildings. I am not sure how he did it, but he got us to my Aunt's house. I'm am not sure that he knows how we got there.

But at least we didn't stop to ask for directions.