Tales of the Townies

So I went over to mom's for supper tonight. Dad's out of town, it was the anniversary of one of mom's best friends (Judy) passing away, and I was in need of a meal that I didn't have to think about -- all in all, a good night to hang out with mom. After a nice home cooked meal, mom and I start debating if we want to go to a friend's daughter's (Lydia) jewelry show. It is part of her high school senior thesis and she dedicated the show to our friend, Judy. While we wanted to support Lydia, we didn't want to drive to North Charleston.

My mother doesn't like to venture outside of her bubble AKA Mt. Pleasant. She'll go to West Ashley, North Charleston, or Downtown for Krispy Kreme or shopping adventures. But most of the time my dad or one of her friends is doing the driving. It's just not her thing. Also note that I did not mention James Island in that least. I'm pretty sure that my mom will have made it to Columbia more than she'll make to where I live now. And I'm 20 minutes away. I digress...

Mom asks me to drive and I kindly decline. We pile in the old Suburban and I ask if we have her GPS. No. We don't because she doesn't like it telling her what to do or punching things in...her typing skills are for another post. 20 minutes later we're on 26 heading down the road. Mom wonders if we're heading in the right direction. Since dad is out of town, we call one of her friends: clearly, we are not heading in the right direction. We turn around at the busiest intersection in North Charleston and get back going the right way.

We continue to get lost and lost and lost. We end up at the tale end of King Street, at which point mom says we are in BFE -- only she says it explicitly. Ha! We are both frightened to ask anyone for directions and are hoping that we don't run out of gas, because of course we are low on gas and lost in the middle of the ghetto at night. After many twists and turns we finally stumble upon the old Navy base where we were headed. Sigh of relief? Not quite. We then get lost on the base and drive around it for a while. Finally, 45 minutes later, we find our destination.

But Lydia's jewelry was beautiful, it was good to see them, and they had wine. Lucky for me, I started enjoying red wine the other day. So I certainly helped myself to a glass.

Lesson learned: Mt. Pleasant townies shouldn't venture outside of their limits. Especially at night. Also, mom should keep the GPS in the car. Just in case.