So I am now in St Louis, on account of business, which as you may recall from a previous post, makes me extremely important. I drove here, and it’s by the sheer grace of God that I actually made it to my hotel, because listen to how my trip went.
First of all, my rental car is a Dodge Avenger. For those of you who own, have owned, ever plan to own, or are fond of Dodges in any way, you may want to skip this paragraph. I happen to be of the opinion that DODGES SUCK ASS. To name a car an Avenger is just silly. It sounds like a comic book car name. And the Avenger that they gave me is WHITE. So it’s like a pure and innocent comic book car. This car, which only had 30k miles on it, SHOOK any time another car passed it in the other lane. It’s like it was scared to be around other cars. Which it probably ought to be, given that other cars probably make fun of its name all the time.
Side note: Shortly before I got to the Illinois border, I passed a TURKEY walking down the shoulder of the highway. The kind with the red gobbly thing on its neck. A TURKEY. It was just moseying down the road, pecking at things, seemingly oblivious to the fact that there were trucks and cars cruising past it at 80mph.
Turkeys are dumb.
Anyway, I made ok time until I saw signs that one of the interstates that I needed to be on was going to be closed at about the place I needed to get on it, and because I am utterly useless in cars without navigation, I took an exit that seemed to indicate it was a detour route, but which was actually a route straight into the hell that is East St Louis. East St Louis looks a lot like the picture above.
So imagine me, in a virginal Avenger, driving aimlessly through drug-infested neighborhoods trying to find anyone who didn’t look like a potential murdering rapist to give me directions. This took awhile, which meant I got more and more lost.
Finally, I found a relatively safe looking BP, and stopped to get directions. There was an older guy filling his tank, looking leeringly at me, as I approached the station. Which, I quickly realized, was one of those box stations where you can’t actually go IN, because the attendant is so scared for his life that the whole thing is just a big cage, and you can only handle gas or snack transactions through a small slot in one of the bullet proof windows. So I go back to the leering older guy and say, “Hi there. Can you please tell me how I might find my way back to 64West?” And do you know what he said to me?
“Sure sweetheart…but I’ll have to take you there myself.”
Yyyyyyyyyyyeah. That clearly wasn’t going to work. Happily, at that precise moment, the caged BP worker emerged from his cage to adjust one of the pumps. I ran to him, tapped him on the shoulder, and found myself face to face with a tall skinny black young man with eyes which pointed in TWO DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS. I am not making this up. And it wasn’t like one eye was pointing straight and one was off to the side. They were literally BOTH off to either side. So, I decided the best course of action was to just talk to his nose.
This made the conversation awkward for both of us, I think.
He was, as it turned out, the sweetest boy ever, and he gave me directions which brought me, fortunately, right to my hotel. He even wrote out the directions so there wouldn’t be any confusion. Sooo sweet. He didn’t try to kill me or ANYTHING!!!
Anyway, I’ll be busy with my important business meetings over the next couple days. Am hoping for a less eventful ride back.
Recent Comments