Driving is a dangerous activity

On one of our many hundreds of trips from the mid-Atlantic to the Northeast, The Husband missed our exit off the Mass Pike. This was not like the time we thought we missed the exit. This time, we really missed it. We were rolling along in the middle lane chatting, singing, excited that our five-hour ordeal in the car was almost at an end, when I saw our exit, Exit 11, approaching on the right. I waited for The Husband to pull into the right lane, put on his blinker, do something, anything, to indicate that he was planning to get off the highway at our exit, Exit 11, thus bringing our five-hour ordeal in the car to an end. By the time I realized he wasn’t going to pull over and had shouted, “That’s our exit!” it was too late, and we had rolled right on by.

A deadly silence fell over the car.

You have to keep in mind that at the time, The Husband lived further north than I, so my five-hour ordeal in the car had been preceded by a two-hour ordeal on the train, which was itself preceded by a half-hour ordeal of getting to the train. By the time we reached our exit, Exit 11, I had usually reached my travel breaking point.

In addition to this, the next exit was ten miles down the road and was a junction with another major highway, so it was difficult to get right off and right back on. Ten minutes later, when we finally arrived at the next exit, I expected The Husband to just do a U-turn in the toll plaza, but instead he got on the other highway went up a few miles and used the next exit to turn around. I did not find this endearing.

By time we finally reached the bottom of his parents’ street at least a half hour after we initially passed it, an extra half hour of time needlessly spent in the car, I had to get out of the car to walk up the hill because I was about to have a nervous breakdown. Or possibly kill The Husband. Either way, it was in his best interest to let me walk up the hill.

Now, any time we are driving on the Mass Pike, I start warning him that our exit, Exit 11, is coming up about five miles early.