My
plan for prom was to go out to someplace far away in the big city to
impress my date with my awesome knowledge of the landscape and my
world wise savoir-faire in providing exotic romantic experiences. To
that end I planed to go to visit the zoo. Hey, kids love the zoo and
in the eyes of the law we were still technically kids. The zoo
closest to where we lived was sort of like a prison for animals. If
you like seeing big cats pacing in a cell made of cement blocks, sad
and doing the cat equivalent of dragging a cup against the bars then
you were in for a treat - a real treat. I looked up the directions of
how to get there but in the dark ages of middle 90's the GPS was not
readily available, the cell phone was for yuppies in movies and the
internet was basically useless. I wrote down the directions which,
like all directions, assumed that I would stay on the path set out
and not make wrong turns rendering them useless. The morning of prom
I went and picked up my date, drove up to the big city, got off the
right exit, got off the second right exit and then proceeded to miss
the zoo completely. I then tried again and then I tried again and my
date was getting pretty evidently cranky with me for not knowing my
way and I was trying to pretend like I was almost there and this
little snafu would be shortly remedied. I stopped and asked
directions and the guy at the gas station gave me directions which I
tried following and still couldn't find it. I stopped another place
for directions and the guy didn't speak English and I got the wrong
directions as well either by misunderstanding or simply because that
guy hated teenagers looking for the zoo. By the time I had not found
the zoo this time we'd been driving for about 2 1/2 hours not gettign
there and the vibe was not the charming hand-holdy pre-kissing one I
had hoped to cultivate. I know it's pretty impressive to a date when
you get lost and this was no exception. I eventually conceded that we
didn't have much time left in order to make it back get changed and
meet our group for dinner, so we we stopped at a Subway restaurant,
ate lunch and drove home in a bit of a crank. Pretty slick.
