A few of you had some good guesses about what I did when I missed my turn to school, but nobody got it exactly right. Leslie was the closest to guessing correctly with her guess that I drove to Canada…or the mall. BlueBella and Elizabeth both guessed that I keyed the car of the bastard who wouldn’t let me switch lanes. Do I look like a vandal? And Angel and JerseyGirl both guessed that I ditched school and chose to either get drunk or smoke pot instead.

What DID I do? I drove to Nebraska.

I was 16 and a half years old. I drove a 1985 Chevette (blue with white pinstripes) named Dick (I LOVED that car). I missed my turn, looked at my friend Dana and said “Now what?” She replied “Lets just keep going.”

And so we turned around (because we decided to head to California. We were starting out smack in the middle of Illinois and were going East when we missed our turn.), passed the school up and started driving. But, first we stopped at our homes for a change of clothes and a toothbrush. We packed very light and I don’t really know why. We had the whole back of the car, you’d think we’d take everything we owned, but we were in a hurry I guess.

We only had about $100 between us, but we were planning to work in little diner’s along the way to earn money. Because thats what they did in the movies and it would have totally worked out JUST FINE.

For lunch we had Tootsie Roll pops to save money.

For dinner we drove through an Arby’s and got 2 Pepsis and some mustard and mayo packets. The drive through guy asked if we wanted the mustard and mayo IN the drinks or on the side. We then headed to a grocery store and bought bread and lunch meat and one of those foam coolers. And THEN! We went to a hotel and stole some of their ice to put in our cooler. We were on a budget, damn it, and ice can get expensive.

That night we parked at what we thought was a hotel and slept in the back of the car. Turns out that it was actually an apartment building, so all those people leaving for work in the morning got to see us snoozing away in their parking lot. I’m amazed the cops weren’t called.

At some point we PICKED UP A HITCHHIKER. Oh, yes, we did. I don’t remember what his name was, something like George or Fred or William or some other TOTALLY NOT SERIAL KILLER SOUNDING name. We had some big story about how we were headed to our grandma’s to live and our boyfriends were there and tra la la it was quite the sweet little story. When we finally got rid of our hitchhiker we both realized that the story? Was fake. And we were both a little saddened to face reality. We weren’t going ANYWHERE. We weren’t meeting ANYONE. Our boyfriends were back at HOME.

We got lost in a not very nice part of Omaha and ended up being chased by a couple of guys. We had been stopped next to them at a red light and started flirting through the windows of our cars. They started following us and motioning for us to pull over so WE DID. In the dark. In some strange city. ALONE. And they kept asking us to follow them back to their house to stay the night SINCE WE DIDN’T HAVE ANYWHERE ELSE TO SLEEP. Oh, yes, we did tell them that we were all alone in a strange city and no one knew where we were. So? Whats the harm in THAT?

After we got back in our car Dana and I looked at each other and said HUH UH and followed them for a second while we worked out a plan to escape. We finally just made a turn when they kept going straight and we lost them eventually. Um, yikes?

I don’t remember for sure if we were gone just one night or if it was two (I’m sure my parents could probably answer that one), but at some point we worked up the nerve to call our parents and let them know we were okay. We were just going to tell them that we were fine and WE WANTED TO SEE THE OCEAN and we MIGHT come home sometime or WE MIGHT NOT. You know, whatever. We were 16 and worldly. We’d be JUST FINE!

Before we made the call we both agreed that our parents would try to sucker us into coming home, but we would be STRONG. They would probably lie and tell us that someone died or some other awful thing just to trick us into coming back. We would not fall for it, no not us.

We called Dana’s mom first, but she was either in the hospital or just home from the hospital or something. She was having heart problems. Damn it. Parents are so manipulative.

We called my parents and told them we were headed home (see above re: manipulative hypochondriacs). They were happy to hear from us, but maybe a leetle angry too. (Mom, how did you realize that we had run away? Did we leave a note or something? What’d it say? Do you still have it?)

We were in Omaha, NE when we turned around and headed back home. We drove for a grand total of 800 miles.

Coming soon: I Never Learn. Unauthorized Road Trip Numero Dos.