This always happens.
Always.
Okay, maybe not always but sometimes. It happens frequently. A lot.
Whenever we are driving anywhere with the family, on a long road trip, Greg claims before we get in the car that he knows where the rest stops/restaurants are located.
He even rhymes off what I now know to be totally made up, fake locations, “There’s two just south of Made-Ups-ville, so we can stop for gas and run in and grab a bite to eat at one of those.”
I nod because I’ve never had any reason to doubt him. Wait. I have nothing but reason to doubt him because he does this every time and yet he says it with such confidence, I fall for it.
Inevitably, the kids are starving as it’s well past an acceptable hour to eat dinner and Greg continues to suggest, “There’s one up here just at the cut-off for ‘Nobody Believes Me Anymore’ and ‘What Highway is this again?’”
The kids have gone from begging to stop for food, to falling asleep, to waking up hungry, to total fatigue, to too tired to ask anymore.
We pass a sign for a golf course and Greg mentions he has golfed there and maybe if we can’t find anywhere to stop, we could go to the golf course to eat.
So a country club (where we are not members) would welcome a family of five, none of whom have showered for three days, After Bite caked on our eyelids like make-up, the smell of lily pads from the lake still in our hair and one actual lily pad in Chloe’s?
He points out the various rest stops on the other side of the highway. The places we do not have access to. He points and smiles in an “I told you so” kind of way making me wish I had my Commodor 64 so I could load up the game Frogger and prove that a video game where a frog gets smoked by cars was made for this very reason. We have NO WAY OF GETTING OVER TO THE OTHER SIDE!
Me: Greg, why do you pretend to know where these rest stops are if you don’t?
Greg: I’m the male in the relationship. I have to pretend to be knowledgeable about this stuff to make myself more attractive to you.
Me: I’m the female in the relationship. Stop and ask for directions, Frogger.
