Someone once said, “Vacations are a microcosm of life”. We’re taking one next week, matters not where we’re going, I or my wife, will soon be lost and Anastasia, the GPS woman who can make you feel like a rat in a maze, will no doubt self destruct, leaving us at the mercy of someone purchasing pork skins or pigs feet in a 7-11 from hell.

Whenever I get lost I take only left turns figuring, if that’s not the right way, I’ll go in a circle and at least, find my way back to where I was. In addition, and unlike most men, I’m not afraid of asking for help. This is where things tend to unravel and the microcosm thing kicks in because the people I find when I’m lost are usually lost themselves or don’t know where I’m going. I f you want to know what some well meaning southern folk are really like, get lost…then ask for directions. And, if you’re more than three blocks away from where you want to be, better hope for divine intervention because that’s what it’s going to take for them to help you find your way. Most will over-educate you to the point where you not only don’t know where you are but also where you were before you got lost. The first words out of their mouths are usually, “Now, see that road over there? That’s yer road, the one yer on now. Go out a here and take…” When you hear those words, you are about to lose your way. .. again. But I digress. After, “ go out a here and take” you’re going to hear a series of stops and turns that will have your eyes crossed and your brain looking like a Waffle House omelet. You now have no idea where you are and you’re wondering how this person finds their own way home.

It’s about now that you stop listening all-together and simply stare and nod your head as though in a trance with some Middle Age monk sending you on a Holy Grail mission. The last thing you want that ol’ boy to think is that you think he may also be lost and how dumb you must have been to ask him for directions. Then you realize the monk has missing teeth, speaks a foreign tongue and you may not see “Kansas” again. I can’t stop nodding, you think to yourself as the absurd idea of writing this stuff down on a grocery bag drifts through your mind. If I stop nodding, he’ll know I’m not listening anymore. You come out of the cross-eyed trance just in time to hear a most important question from your mission minded friend. “Now, ya got that!?” He says, with the fervor of televangelist intent on showing you the way. “Yes, yes!” You say, praying he doesn’t ask you to repeat them. Out of nowhere comes, “Sebastian, you could tell him the back way!” “Naw, says the monk, he’d get lost fer sure then.”

Now, trying to catch the words before they slip between your lips and knowing you have forgotten the front way, sure nuff, you ask for the “back way”, figuring you will never be any more lost than you are right now. This is a huge mistake as the “back way” sounds a lot like the front way with one or two more turns, and you’re hearing phrases like, “take a right at the church, left at Burger King, cross the creek and if you see the mill… you’ve gone too far.” So as we take our microcosm on the road next week, the mission will be to see how long we can stay found and if that’s not to be, to find that person with a full set of teeth who knows where he is and where we’re going... barring that, no fighting in the car.