Round the long way

by I Heart My Sox

Rated: E · Short Story · Comedy · #2355449

A man that is not entirely wrong.

"I think we're going the wrong way," I said softly. To get him to ask for directions rather than blindly following his phone, I needed to proceed carefully.

"This is what the phone is telling me to do."

"Did you put the address in correctly?" He glared at me for a fraction of a second. He was red in the face. I smiled at him and nodded. Okay, so maybe Google Maps is off. Still, this does not look like the correct route."

"What do you want me to do? This is where it said to go!" He slammed on the brakes and hit the steering wheel. "I do not know what else I can do."

"We could ask for directions from a local."

He gestured out at the dirt road we were on. "Point one out!"

"Perhaps we should go back to the highway. There was a gas station there."

He grimaced and then began to turn around. All went fine until he overshot into the ditch on the side of the road. He fought with it for fifteen minutes, and then began hitting his head on the steering wheel.

"Should I call roadside assistance?"

"Where do you tell them we are?"

"Good point. Well, perhaps I should call the B&B and let them know we are going to be a little late, but we still want our reservation."

"Why not?"

I called, and they asked where we were stuck. I told them we were somewhere on rural road 128. They said to wait where we were, someone would come help us out of the ditch and lead us to the B&B. Shortly, a tractor came trundling down the road from the direction we had been going. They got us out of the ditch and turned back around in the direction we had been going. Then they turned and went back the way we came. We followed. Ten minutes later, we came to a sign announcing the B&B, just about the time the road turned to pavement. It turned in, and we followed. We parked, and the tractor driver came to the driver's side window.

"I don't know why you were coming the direction you were. You should have come from the highway."

"We did, the map app said to get off at exit 422."

"Oh, it must not have updated after exit 423 reopened. Yeah, the highway is just a short hop on down this road." So we were going the wrong way in the right direction.

Prompt ▶︎

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