29 Lessons I Learned the Hard Way

Lesson 21

Lesson 21. Drive me crazy, or drives me crazy?

Maybe, it was just me, maybe this wasn’t as terrifying as I thought it was, I mean, I’m afraid of roller coaster, so who knows? But whatever it was…it was driving me crazy.

The organization I was working with had us traveling all over the state. There were about 60 of us total  and we were split up into teams of ten people. Each group had two vans, and these vans were….sketchy.

I think the place they rented the vans from was the same place that gave Hollywood the vans they used for sketchy spies in over-dramatic action movies. These vans were white, with tinted windows, special license plates, and a white piece of paper stuck to the back window with a code on it.

(Something like A17-5T6, 67R-TH4, 921-H4H, etc.)

Needless to say our vans looked….. creepy.

The trips we made each day varied in length. Sometimes these car trips would be only a minute or two long, other times they would last for an hour or so and I would be stuck in a van filled with boys who though it was fun to quote Geico Commercials.

Our driver was one of the younger boys mom, other than her, I was the only girl in the van. The other half of the team was in the other van and they volunteered to take the lead with driving, so we followed them wherever they went.

Seriously…………. wherever.

We had been driving down the highway for some time now and I was really gettingbored of hearing Geico commercials. (Seriously, how much TV did these boys watch?)

There was an exit up ahead and I was grateful to see Ginny, our driver, pull onto it. (We must be at least getting closer if we weren’t on the highway anymore.) It was one of those long curving exits were you are turning forever, and your entire body is being sucked to one side of the car.

Finally, after turning forever the exit ended and an Toll Gate loomed overhead.

The other van in front of us slammed on their brakes and pulled over to the side of the road.

Ginny, unsure of what was happening, did the same.

The boys stopped quoting Geico and looked up to see what was going on.

“What’s wrong?” Andrew asked

Ginny shook her head and rolled down her window, the driver from the other van had gotten out of her car and was walking over to us.

“We are going the wrong way.” She said.

We all sat there nervously wondering what this meant.

“We can’t go through the Toll Gate, it will cost $4 and then we are going to have to turn right around and pay $4 again.” The other driver said. “We are just going to have to back up.”

“Back up?!?” Ginny eyes were wide “You mean dive backwards around this one way curve?”

The other driver nodded.

The backseat fell silent.

“I’ll go first!” the other driver volunteered.

We all sat there in silence nervously waiting as she starting rounding the corner.

One of the older boys had gotten out of the car and was watching for other cars coming. He was giving the thumbs up so the van kept crawling backwards.

Finally about ¾ of the way back she pulled over to the side and hopped out of the car again. There was a strip of land about 40 yards wide separating the east going highway, from the west going highway and in the middle of that strip of land was a gulch. She peered down at the strip before walking back over towards us.

“We have to cross the strip, then we will be on the highway going the right way.”

Ginny swallowed nervously, “What?”

The other driver nodded, “Back up the van, I’ll watch for you.”

Ginny’s eyes were wide in fear as she slowly switched the car to reverse and starting creeping backwards.

Luckily, no one used this exit while we were backing up so we didn’t have any problem with other cars. We reached the other van and pulled over to the side next to them.

The other driver, (I should really start calling her by her name shouldn’t i? Instead of just calling her the other driver? Or maybe I should just name her the other driver? I think that’s what I’ll do: Her name is now officially ‘The Other Driver’ TOD for short.)

TOD hoped in her van and pulled across the exit to the other side where the land strip was. She started driving down into the strip and suddenly was whisked away from our view.

We all sat with batted breath.

Did she make it?

We waited

And waited

And waited

And waited.

Finally TOD came walking up from the land strip waving her hands.

“Come on!” she yelled, “It’s fine! Just be careful to stay to the left! Otherwise the car will fall into the ditch and the van will roll.”

With that happy thought in mind Ginny started the van and we drew closer and closer to the precipice.

I felt the change in the movement of the car as we changed asphalt for grass and held tightly onto the plastic handle of the van door.

“Please don’t let us die” I prayed

The van continued inching forwards and I looked around to see everyone was just like me, gripping something tightly, fiercely praying and staring wide eyed out the window.

The gulch lurked to our right like a hole to the center of the earth. I swallowed and prayed even harder.

“I see them!” one of the boys in the backseat called “I see the other van!”

Sure enough, there up ahead like the beacon of a lighthouse on a stormy night was the other van and TOD standing smiling beside it.

We pulled up next to her and were relieved to see that here the land strip was flat across, we could pull onto the other side of the highway no problem.

TOD walked over to our car and smiled at Ginny, “That wasn’t bad at all, was it?” she asked

Ginny stared blankly ahead her hands were still stuck clinging dearly to the steering w heel of the car.

She looked back at all of us and smiled. “See you when we get there!” she cheered

With that she smiled and jumped back into the van and pulled onto the highway.

Tollbooths and I, are no longer friends.

I blame the tollbooth, for what happened that day.

If it hadn’t been there, maybe we could have turned around like normal people.

Instead, it made us drive crazily….or rather it drove us to craziness.

Either way, it drove us crazy.

Lesson Learned:

The tollbooth is not my friend.