Conversations with My Father: Getting Nowhere Edition

MY FATHER: Now normally, to get to the Huguenot Bridge, what I do is to take Parham Road past where our old dentist’s office was—you remember Dr. Pryor, I really never have liked his replacement’s replacement since they moved offices out past where your old French horn teacher lived, right around the corner from that old pharmacy that was the only place I could get the indigestion tablets your mother liked—and then I turn onto River Road. . . .

ME: Wait, I’m confused. Are we driving out to the pharmacy? I thought we were going to the Huguenot Bridge.

MY FATHER: We are going to the Huguenot Bridge, after you turn onto River Road up here. I was talking about where the replacement dentist for the replacement for our original dentist moved, around the corner from the pharmacy where I got the. . . .

ME: Indigestion tablets, yes, I know.

MY FATHER: I still have several rolls of those tablets.

ME: Christ. Throw them out. What are they, twenty-five years old at this point? Thirty?

MY FATHER: They’re a nice memento.

ME: Indigestion pills are not a memento. God, you’re like those hoarders on TV.

MY FATHER: So up here, you’re going to pass first the hardware store where we got the paint for the dining room in 1986, then past where the donut place was that your mother liked when we first moved here even though they tore it down before we moved into our house—gosh, I hadn’t thought about that place for a long time—then we’ll drive by the University of Richmond, and then the Country Club where your mother staged that surprise protest when you were eight, and after we cross the bridge there should be some woods and then Riverside Drive, and then we’re going to look for Elm Street and turn onto Wayburn and then we’ll—

ME: I . . . I can’t. My synapses are melting. You need to slow down.

MY FATHER: What’s the matter?

ME: When I’m driving and I’m having to concentrate on traffic and directions, we need to cut down on the reminiscences and get down to some real directions.

MY FATHER: Real directions.

ME: Practical directions.

MY FATHER: Practical directions.

ME: Okay. We understand each other?

MY FATHER: I think we do.

ME: Okay. This is the bridge. I’m turning right. We’re getting onto the bridge. What’s the next thing we’re doing?

MY FATHER: Okay, we are going to be looking for a set of streets, perpendicular to this street.

ME: A set of streets perpendicular to this street.

MY FATHER: Correct. A set of perpendicular streets at which this street continues on, going both north and south, while the perpendicular streets, which are the ones we're looking for, cross the street we currently are on, easterly and westerly. That is, the perpendicular streets are going in both directions, but not the directions we currently are. . . .

ME: OH MY GOD. You are making my BRAIN ACHE.

MY FATHER: Am I being unclear? There will be a set of streets perpendicular to this one, easterly and wester. . . .

ME: You mean a FOUR-WAY INTERSECTION?

MY FATHER: Well yes, that’s one way of putting it.

ME: It’s the CORRECT way of putting it. Christ.

MY FATHER: Gawrsh. You’re cranky.

ME: What’s next?

MY FATHER: Well. . . .

ME: We are remembering to keep it exact. Keep it precise.

MY FATHER: Exact and precise.

ME: Right. So?

MY FATHER: Okay. There are four lanes ahead. You don't want to be in the far left one, because it makes you turn left, and you don't want to be in the next-to-left one, because that also makes you turn left—there are two left lanes and the traffic light makes you turn left in both of them—and you don't want to be in the next-to-the-next-to-the-left one, because then you have to go straight, so. . . .

ME: IN OTHER WORDS, YOU WANT ME TO TURN RIGHT.

MY FATHER: If you want to boil it down like that.

ME: Oh, I do. I DO WANT YOU TO BOIL IT DOWN.

MY FATHER: Fine, fine. I’ll keep it succinct.

ME: THANK YOU.

MY FATHER [after a pause]: You know you missed the turn back there, right?

ME: GODDAMMIT.