A Convoluted Path

Thought for the day:  If  you come to a fork in the road, take it.  (Yogi Berra)

WHICH WAY??? 

I'm directionally challenged. Anyone who knows me well knows this. In fact, this particular shortcoming provided my husband with a good deal of cheap entertainment before we were married. In the 60s, gasoline was dirt cheap. I'm talking a quarter a gallon or less. (PLUS an attendant pumped it for you, checked your oil and tires, washed your windshield, gave you savings stamps, AND a free gift if you spent over two bucks!) Anyway, since the price of driving was so low, cruising was a fun and inexpensive way to spend an evening, and we did it often. We'd drive around in his '61 Impala,  talk, listen to the radio, and usually ended the evening by meeting friends at our favorite drive-in eatery, which also happened to be a prime spot for pop-up challenges and impromptu drag races. (Natch, we were purely spectators.)

Once in a while, we'd be tooling along, yammering, listening to the radio, with no particular destination in mind,  (at least, not in MY mind) and he'd suddenly turn to me, grin, and say, "Show me how to get back home."

Say, WHAT? Half the time, I didn't even know where we WERE, let alone how to get home from there, but I tried. Even succeeded most of the time. Of course, there were times he'd get weary of the whole game and say, "Are you SURE you want to go that way?" or, "I DO have to go back to work on Monday."

Going in circles isn't the problem. It's knowing when to exit.

The point is, even though I made a LOT of wrong turns, we eventually made it home again. So, maybe Yogi Berra was right when he said, "If you come to a fork in the road, take it." Maybe the precise route we take isn't nearly as important as we make it out to be. After all, there's more than one way to get from point A to point B. So what if our path is so round-about it resembles the ones taken by the kids in "Family Circus"? Or if we get side-tracked on a detour and take twice as long to get to our destination as we'd planned? So what if our sons and daughters quit college to do their own thing? Their paths to adulthood may not be the direct straight line paths we would've preferred, but as long as they make a success of the trip, isn't that all that matters?

 So what if I waited so many years before getting serious about writing? I'm here now.

If there were a cosmic information booth, I probably still would've chosen to wing it, rather than ask for directions to my predetermined destination. There's something empowering about picking our path when we come to those forks in the road, isn't there? One decision leads to another leads to another, and eventually our decisions bring us to the place we're supposed to be. Even if we make a wrong decision, it's never too late to change course. We may go the wrong way around the beltway, but baby, we're here now ... older, and hopefully wiser, for having taken the trip.

One of the longest side trips I took on the way to where I am today involved amateur radio. Getting a radio license had never been a part of my original plans,  so little did I know that once I did, my life would take so many other unexpected twists and turns. In a bizarre cause-and-effect path that indirectly started with my love of trivia and resulted in four terms as the Section Manager for my state, it was an exciting trip, and one I'll never regret taking. Next time, I'll tell you how following the path of amateur radio led me to such an amazing place, the President of the United States thanked ME.

So, how about you? Are you one of those fortunate people, like my husband, who set your guideposts early in life, and followed a fairly direct route to where you are today? Did you always have a love of writing, or of some other pursuit, and followed that clearly marked path as long as you can remember, with grit and determination? Or have you taken a lot of side trips and detours along the way?  (If you have, I hope you enjoyed them as much as I've enjoyed mine.)

Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.