Lost - Business Trip to Washington DC

     While working at McDonnell Douglas/Boeing, I made a number of business trips with various people sometimes even by myself.   One I remember well was a trip I took with Bret R and Bill H (our boss) to Washington DC.  In addition to being co-workers with Bret and Bill we were friends as well.   It was fun traveling with both Bret and Bill because they both had a great sense of humor but slightly different from each other.

     Bret was quick witted and had an excellent memory for jokes. Bill also had a good memory for jokes but he could also tell a meandering story that he seemed to make up as he went along never knowing when or how it would end.

     As I remember it we flew into Baltimore, picked up a rental to drive to DC.  These were the days before GPS so we had to rely on maps.  Bret was driving and Bill was in the backset so that left me as the navigator (big mistake).  Washington was south of Baltimore about an hours drive down a major highway, pretty hard to get lost.  The thing is I was never very good with understanding directions when someone would tell me go North, South, East or West (compass directions).  I’m more of a go left or right person; it requires much less thought.  I was in the cub scouts but not the boy scouts.  As a cub scouts we never went in to the woods just over to the Den Mothers house to make something out of spaghetti noodles.  So I blame my directionally challenged brain to the fact that I was never introduced to a compass.

     Funny thing about maps they use only compass directions.  One other I did when using maps was to orient them so the destination was always on top despite the compass direction, so even though our destination (Washington) was South, I held the map with Washington at the top.  Are you starting to see the basic problem?  So with me as the navigator we headed due North out of the Airport.  Did you catch that North, we were on the right highway but going the opposite direction.  After driving about ½ hour Bret says how much farther and I look at the map to try and see where we are by locating a town we just passed but nothing looks familiar.  That’s odd!  So I say, I think we’re good should be about ½ hour to go.  I’m fairly good with math, we drove for ½ hour so that leaves ½ hour for an hour trip.  After about an hour Bret says we should be here what’s going on?  I exclaim “I don’t know I can’t find these towns on the map”  With that Bret says ”You’ve got the map upside down, we’re going the wrong way.”  Hum, could that be, well yes it absolutely was, Opps. Well there were some stronger words used but you can make up your own.

    Here’s where things got a little tense, our 1 hour trip now turned into a 3 hour trip which was quite upsetting to Bret after all he was doing the driving but it was justified.  At this point I must tell you that I had never seen Bret upset about anything but I guessed I pushed him over the line.  Up until this time Bill was relatively quite sitting in the backseat relaxing but sensing the tension he began talking, actually it was more like a rambling story about his old hunting dog Blue.  At one point Bret asks him what was he talking about but Bill just kept rambling on with his story.  I don’t remember much about the story he told but it was the perfect moment for his goofy story.  He continued with this meandering story about his dog Blue on and off for the rest of the trip.  He was just making stuff up on the fly and talking in a slow methodical tone.  Well by the time we arrived at the hotel we were all laughing at Bill’s goofy disjointed story.

     Bill recognized the tension and knew he could use his humor to break through this tense moment.  It worked well, That's the thing about humor it can be used to defuse a tense situation.  Just to let you know we are all still good friends today.