Completely losing my bearings was not in the plan.  I drove past O’Hare and figured I had another 20 miles to go.  20 miles later (10 minutes later) I realized I had gone too far.  I pulled off the highway into one of those industrial areas that you can’t miss.  As luck would have it, I found a police car ***holed in to a parking lot.  I pulled up next to him and put on my best, bounciest, love me jaunt, and hopped out of my car. 

Knock, knock, knock, “Hi!  I’m a little lost, (I twirl my hair and grin) how do I get to Irving Park Road from here?”

He smiles gruffly (can you smile gruffly?  He seemed to be able to)  ”That’s like an hour away!” He exclaimed (In otherwords – You dumb sassy little girl)

“What?  But I’ve only been driving an hour and a half and I’m from Milwaukee?”  Did I say too much?

I handed him the map I had.  He glanced at it “1-294 isn’t even on this map.” 

I handed him another map.  He examined it closer,  ”Okay, I-294 is here and you’re here”  He points to the white 4″ border at the bottom of the map.  “Maybe 20 min if traffic is good.  Just get back on that frontage road, go to the second lights, turn left and you’ll be right back on I-294″

“Thanks” I smiled brightly.  I was still lost, but this man was not wanting to help.

I got in my car and ignored the driving directions and examined the map.  I drove north and this time, there was no off ramp for the exit.  Frustration is the word that comes to mind when I remember looking over my right shoulder watching the street I wanted to be on go by.  

I did get there only 25 minutes late.  I feel this is a testimony to how awesome a driver I am. 

Research when I got home showed that internet map services are not always corrent.  Google map has had it’s problems.  A month ago, if you wanted to go from Stanford to Stockholm, Google recommended that you “swim across the Atlantic Ocean”.

In January, the mapmakers changed a dart across the street into a long journey of 18 minutes. The recommended route had a person take a 10.4-kilometre scenic detour that involves crossing the Harbour Bridge twice.
 

Also In January,Google had a driver make a lot of U-turns to get from Bensalem to North Brunswick.  As it turned out there was a bug in the program.  

The point of the story is :  I am still an awesome driver, it was Mapquest and Yahoo that were wrong.

***Holed in – true police lingo for hiding and napping or doing other work.  Parking lots and alleys are favorite spots.

Yesterday was the warmest day so far this year.  A balmy 72 degrees.  I got up in the morning, the robins were calling, the breeze was blowing and the sun was popping out.  I thought, “What a beautiful day to be outside.”  Unfortunately, that is also what is on my associate principal’s mind this morning.   He wakes up, looks outside and thinks, ”It’s a great day to get our monthly fire drill in.”  (really, this IS what he thinks)  At 7:45am, 1400 people were startled out of our shoes class by a noise I can only describe as a hockey buzzer blaring over over and over, with emergency lights screaming at us to get out of the building.

There are many, many procedures occuring in our schools that we could never accept in an adult workplace.  Off the top of my head – firedrills, tornado drills, code red emergency drills, hallway passes, permission slips, pep rallies and  morning announcements.  

I can just imagine any bosses face if he or she was asked to write up a pass to use the facilities.  It lifts the corners of my mouth to think of everyone in a company, getting up from their desk in the middle of winter and trudging out of the building (without a coat) for 5 minutes.  And then, there is my personal favorite – the pledge of allegiance.  We cannot start our day until we stand up, face the flag, put our hand over our heart and say, “I pledge allegiance…”   I say if you are not a teacher, you should try it.  Stand every morning, face the flag (or north? if no flag in sight) and loudly recite the pledge.  How long before it gets old?  Try any of these procedures in your company, I dare you.

Today my neighbor came over and offered to pay my children to pick up sticks in his yard.  I have known my neighbor for years, and the retired fireman has been slowly declining physically over the past 15 years.  This time it was different, he seems to be declining mentally now.  He asked my son’s name repeatedly.  He  thought I worked in Greenfield (I left Greenfield 10 years ago) and I reminded him three times that this was the case.   He couldn’t remember the other neighbor’s name whom I know he is good friends with.    Lastly, my son and daughter are 4 & 6, and he wanted to pay them more than a dollar each.  Any person who has ownership over all of their marbles, knows that a 4 & 6 year old will not even do a quarter’s worth of work.  

Later, I saw an article on MSN which described how a woman was up in a tree picking sopapilla fruit.  Her neighbor saw the leaves rustling, got his gun and shot her.    He says he thought she was a monkey.   I am suddenly concerned that I, or my children, would be confused with a monkey and shot by my neighbor.   I wonder what precautions we should take so that the event does not happen here?   Granted there are other humorous reasons for reading the article, but it makes me think…

Me or Monkey?