I let the keys jingle jauntily as I
unlocked the door of my family’s black minivan. I always enjoyed the drive home
from work; as an eighteen-year old working his first official summer job in
Augusta, Maine, I received a pleasurable feeling of independence from directing
some small aspect of my daily destiny. Part of this self-satisfaction stuck to
the car itself, which I treated as a benevolent aunt—the kind who always gives the
perfect Christmas presents and organizes exclusive, cousin-only outings at
family reunions. Despite her questionable brakes and intermittent air conditioning,
Mrs. Minivan and I got along well.
This particular day was especially
auspicious. Now that work was over, I had been invited to spend some time at a
good friend’s house before heading home. The only fly buzzing at the edges of my good mood was
that in order to get to my friend’s house, Mrs. Minivan and I would have to take a cumbersome
route, driving south on the highway 32 miles before turning east and driving 19
miles. If I avoided the highway and took the back roads, I was convinced that I
would not only take the shortest distance between two points (only 40 miles!),
but I would also enjoy the residential scenery more than the highway’s repetitive
foliage. However, I swatted the fly away with a smile and decided to take the most
familiar route. I crawled through the traffic on Augusta’s Western Avenue and
turned onto the highway.
That
was my first mistake.
It
wasn’t long after I had pulled onto the highway that I remembered I had no cash
for the toll. My wallet was empty, and the car’s coin drawer was devoid of
bills. This was unfortunate, I thought, but not the end of the world. The
tollbooth sat just off an exit, so I decided to simply bypass the exit and take
the next available one. Then I would figure out where I was and how to get to
my destination without paying the toll. The sign for my exit ran toward me, and
I passed it with a jaunty lift of the eyebrows. Exploring unknown reaches of an
unknown highway—this was the spirit of adventure.
However,
just as thunder dampens the spirit of a camping trip, so also the long
stretches of highway dampened my adventurous mood. Surely there would be an
exit soon, I thought. But the exit never came, and I kept driving until I saw an
ominous sign: TOLL PLAZA AHEAD. I had been ambushed; there wasn’t even a
benevolent exit to give penniless drivers a chance to escape. I felt the
temptation to panic, but instead I rolled down my window and prayed that the attendant
would be merciful.
“I’m
sorry, but I don’t have a dollar for the toll,” I said. “I got on this road by
mistake, and—”
“You
have no cash at all?”
“No,” I
responded remorsefully. A red pickup truck came to a stop behind me.
“Well,
do you have a personal check?”
“No,” I
answered.
The
attendant began to look desperate. “You don’t have a personal check at all?”
“Wait a
minute,” I said, as the light began to dawn. I did have my checkbook with me,
tucked inside my work bag. But stopping in the middle of a tollbooth to write a
check? Well, there was no other way. “Who should I make it out to?” I asked.
One
minute later, Mrs. Minivan exited the tollbooth, much to the relief of the cars
behind her. As providence would have it, my effort to escape one toll had led
me to a more expensive tollbooth that cost me twenty-five cents extra. And all
that for the privilege of driving on a road that was taking me to an unknown
destination that probably wasn’t where I wanted to wind up anyway.
That was the other problem. I knew
I was going south, which was good, but I had a sinking feeling that I was also
going west, which was not good. When I made the ill-advised decision to bypass
my exit in favor of adventure, I did so with full knowledge of the signs that
said I was going in the direction of Portland, Auburn, and Lewiston, three
cities far removed from my destination. Of course, I had expected a friendly
exit to appear and convey me to a more desirable location. But as the tollbooth
shrunk behind me and the road twisted interminably in front of me, I felt my
hope evaporating. I tried to keep my spirits up, but it was a losing battle. By
this point I knew that I was going to be hopelessly late, and I could not
understand why God had allowed this to happen to my schedule. How could a
loving God permit such misery?
At long last, an exit sign sailed
over the horizon and I jumped excitedly in my seat like a castaway in sight of
rescue. I hadn’t gone all the way to Auburn, thank God, and I knew approximately
where I was. True, I had gone far out of my way, but now I was on familiar
roads and driving toward a familiar destination. This wasn’t exactly the spirit
of unknown adventure, but what mattered now was that I was again in control of
my destination. I put my blinker on as Mrs. Minivan turned out of the highway and
into freedom.
I was sure that I knew the way to
the center of town, but as time progressed the scenery began to look less and
less familiar. My cell phone GPS confirmed my direction, though, so I followed
its promptings off the main road onto a cross street. From there I turned onto
Main Street, and from Main Street onto Edgecomb Road, a quiet neighborhood
overhung by trees and interspersed with barns and fields. I passed a horse
stable, and the road turned to dirt. Fifty
yards later, I came to a dilapidated set of planks laid over a ravine and
stopped.
I didn’t stop because of the
condition of the road; I yielded to the other vehicle that was driving over the
one-lane bridge. It was a camouflage pickup truck piloted by a grizzled redneck
in a battered white t-shirt, who stared strangely at Mrs. Minivan as he passed.
His gaze irked me, so I adjusted my collar and pressed my dress shoe onto the
gas pedal, certain that the GPS was taking me by a little-known shortcut.
However, sometimes the road less traveled
on deserves to remain hidden. Formerly a smooth journey on genial asphalt, my trek
on Edgecomb Road immediately devolved into a rustic safari over a ramshackle road
filled with rocks, potholes, and mud puddles. Although her effort was noble,
Mrs. Minivan was no match for the rough terrain. We plunged into puddles and surged
over rocks with skirts lifted high, becoming alternately a pair of synchronized
sky divers and exploding popcorn kernels. With each jolt, I imagined the car’s
engine tumbling onto the road; indeed, several minutes into our journey down
Edgecomb Road, a protruding rock struck the minivan’s underbelly with a
sickening crash. In the tumult, I noticed a sign warning me that this was a
private road: “Don’t abuse it or you’ll lose it!” In my case, the road was
abusing my car rather than the other way around, and my goal was to lose
Edgecomb Road as soon as possible. But the road kept going with no end in
sight.
After several interminable minutes,
Mrs. Minivan squealed to a stop. I was in front of a ginormous mud puddle of
uncertain depth that stretched across the entire trail. There was no way to
skirt around it; swimming was the only way forward. Mrs. Minivan eyed the foggy
depths warily while I pondered my next move. I had heard tales of naïve
minivans being mauled by rogue mud puddles, yet my mind urged me forward. The
puddle was probably completely benign. This road undoubtedly led me to my
destination; I was late and turning around would only exacerbate my tardiness. Most
importantly, I had started this trek, and I was going to finish it. I was in
control of my destination, and this was the route I had picked.
But as I stared into the gloomy puddle,
I realized that I could not risk our family car on a whim. After all, I was not
Moses. I put the car in reverse and bumped slowly to a small clearing, then
turned the car around. I was defeated. Mrs. Minivan’s outdoor expedition was
over.
My former adventurous buoyancy had now
completely evaporated. I felt as though I had failed myself, since my efforts
to arrest the evening’s downfall had only exacerbated it; I had failed my
friend, since I was destined to be at least an hour late to his house; and I
had failed my friend’s family, since they were waiting for me to eat dinner. Given
the evening’s track record, I doubted that I would even make it to my friend’s
house, so I turned off my GPS and called my friend to suggest that it would be
better to rendezvous elsewhere. But then his dad came on the line and explained
that they still wanted to have me over and didn’t mind postponing dinner if I
still wanted to come. The grace that my friend’s dad extended to me in that
phone call reversed the downward spiral of my thoughts. I was forgiven. All was
not lost after all. I jolted slowly back down Edgecomb Road and onto Main
Street; only later did I realize that all that remained was for me to relinquish
my pride and forgive myself.
By the time I reached my friend’s
house, I was fifty minutes later than expected but only twenty minutes late for
dinner. That was okay, though. They laughed as I narrated the evening’s comedy
of errors, and I laughed as they shared stories of similar situations. I had a
great time: dinner was delicious, the conversation sweet, and the fellowship refreshing.
When the night was over, I called my dad to let him know that I was leaving. He
enjoyed my story of the evening’s misadventures, and when I was done he coolly instructed
me to reopen the coin drawer. I was shocked: when I had first opened the drawer
to look for toll money, my mind must have been so fixated on dollar bills that
I overlooked the four quarters sitting nonchalantly on the bottom of the
drawer. Mrs. Minivan had held enough money for the toll after all.
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