Almost As Amusing As The Amusement Park!

When I was younger, around a decade ago, I used to love two things: cars and roads. Still, to this day, I love cars, but the way I loved roads was through maps. My favorite activity when I was bored was to go on the Maps app and look at the highways that surrounded my area.

My oldest sister was my only sibling who had a license at the time. One summer day, she was bored and decided to take her boyfriend and me to an amusement park an hour and a half away from home. My father needed the car at the car dealership the next morning as it was scheduled to have routine maintenance done. My father sent [Sister] the address of the dealership and requested that she drop the car off, and he would go and pick us up at the dealership.

Here is where [Sister] made a mistake. She typed in the address and clicked on the nearest place with that road. The issue was that the nearest place with that road was a town an hour in the opposite direction.

She got onto a road that I will call State Route 100. This intersects with Interstate 1, which we were supposed to get onto. She passed the highway.

Me: “You were supposed to make that right.”

Sister: “That’s not what the map says.”

Five minutes later, I tried again.

Me: “We are heading in the wrong direction; this does not go home.”

Sister: “Maybe it’s an alternate route that’s faster?”

Me: “I don’t think a road going in the opposite direction is faste—”

She cut me off, now annoyed.

Sister: “Listen. I’m going to focus on what the map says, not on you. Just stop already.”

And with that, I followed her instructions. After all, why would I complain about going on a road I had never been on?

From what I remember after that, we stopped for gas about half an hour in. [Sister] was still convinced that we were going in the right direction, but why should I correct her? She was listening to the map, after all.

The Fallout:

We hit an expressway. [Sister] was convinced we had made it home and was pleased with herself. That was until an overhead sign said, “[Town #1] Regional Airport, 1 Mile.”

At that point, [Sister] realized her mistake and started freaking out.

Sister: “I didn’t know this road went here! I was following the map! [My Name], why didn’t you tell me we were going the wrong way?”

I was scared of her getting mad at me, so I just said:

Me: “After you told me to stop, I just stopped paying attention to where you were going.”

[Sister] eventually pulled into a gas station and saw where she had set her GPS to. After she corrected her mistake, we headed in the opposite direction, although the car ride was rather silent. We eventually saw signs for the amusement park where we had started because she had to turn left at the road I originally told her to turn at.

And that is how I turned a drive supposed to take an hour and a half into a three-and-a-half-hour journey. Years have passed since this happened, and I told my father, who thought it was hysterical. I often consider telling [Sister], but we sadly rarely speak anymore.