We’re About To Come To A Crossroads. Really.

While visiting family, I’m asked to go to the chippy and buy dinner. I’m really bad with directions and don’t know the area well, but luckily, the directions I’m given are simple. Leave the house, go left, and stay on the pavement. Do not cross any roads; the chippy will be on the left. On the way back, leave the chippy and turn right and the house will be on the right.

At the time, I’m a teenager and my dad has decided that I don’t need a phone, so if I get lost, I have no way to contact my family unless I can find someone who does have a phone and will let me borrow it.

Despite my nerves, this seems like a simple enough explanation that I won’t get lost, so off I go. There is one bit of the pavement that can barely be walked on, and it would be safer to cross the road than balance on the kerb, but I have been told not to cross the road, so I don’t.

I walk for a long time. Eventually, I see my grandad’s house again. I have walked a complete loop and have not seen the chippy at all. They don’t believe me, telling me how unobservant I am. That isn’t false, per se, but still unappreciated. I’m sent to look for the chippy again, and this time I keep my head turned to the left and make sure each building I pass is not the chippy.

When I return the second time, it’s been approaching forty minutes since I was first supposed to leave. No one is happy with me. My dad is yelling that it should not be this difficult for me to find the chippy. I’m sent out a third time, and this time, I check both left and right just in case. Still no chippy.

The fourth time, my dad comes with me. He’s fuming and planning on showing me exactly where the chippy is and why I’m so oblivious to have not noticed it beforehand. I’m planning to walk along the pavement as I have been to show him that there is no chippy.

After the pavement that’s basically just a kerb, there is a T-junction, so we have to go left. But as I turn to the left and follow the pavement as I was told to do, my dad walks up to the road and is about to cross it.

Dad: “Where are you going?”

Me: “I’m following the pavement.”

Dad: “No, the chippy’s this way.”

Me: “But you said not to cross any roads.”

Dad: “This isn’t a road.”

Me: “Yes, it is. That’s the road it connects to, and the cars turn into it there and then go this way.”

I point in the direction I was going to walk.

Dad: “Oh, come on. It’s so tiny it barely counts.”

I am not at all happy about this, but I follow him across this not-road and the next immediately after. The chippy is just a couple of doors to the left now.

Dad: “See, there it is. That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”

Me: “But we had to cross roads. You said there were no roads.”

Dad: “They don’t count as roads. You were supposed to cross them. How did you think you’d get to the chippy by turning left too early?”

I had to spend all of dinner listening to him tell everyone how “silly” I was for not knowing I was supposed to cross not-roads when I was told to not cross roads.