“This is one hell of a shortcut you took,” Anna complained to her husband. “We should have been there by now.”
“Yeah, Daddy, when are we gonna get there?” asked Sandy from the back seat. “I’m hungry and I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Me too, Daddy” added Cindy.
“Reach into the glove compartment and pull out the map,” George ordered his wife.
Anna glanced at George and then pulled a map out of the glove box. “I told you to get one of those GPS devices before we left,” she said. “But you’re too cheap to buy one. And now we’re out here lost in the middle of nowhere.”
George pulled the car over to the side of the road, unfolded the map, and studied it for a few minutes. “According to this map, the road we’re on should have taken us to the park, but maybe I missed the turn off.”
“George,” Anna asked, “how old is that map?”
“How the hell should I know?”
Anna grabbed the map and looked at the legend. “Rand McNally, copyright 1963,” she said. “Really, George, 1963? Did it not occur to you that the roads may have changed over the past fifty years?”
Grumbling, George grabbed the map back from his wife and stared at it for a few minutes more. “I’m sure if we keep going straight we’ll get there sooner or later.”
“If we don’t get there sooner, rather than later, we may have to cut short our trip by a day or two,” Anna said.
“Better late than never,” George said, pulling the car back onto the paved road.
From the back seat Sandy pleaded, “Daddy, I really have to go!”
“Me too, Daddy,” added Cindy.
Writtne for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt from Linda G. Hill. The prompt is to use shortcut/cut short” (one or both) in the post.
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