I had many good intentions of doing #writephoto in the past few weeks, but you know about good intentions…. Thank you, Sue!

No Sense of Direction

I’ve always had a good sense of direction, for a woman. Do you know how many men have tried to take maps out of my hands because, well, “you’re a woman”? I even got “lost” once because a man took my map and proceeded to give me directions, wrong directions. We ended up in Canada, overshooting Boston by hundreds of miles. Yes, perhaps I was partly at fault because I saw the roadway signs, but I was feeling obstinate and wanted to prove a point, which, obviously I did. We were late for our conference, but I won points…because I’m competitive and mean and just don’t care sometimes what smug men think of me.

At the annual Reiters’ company retreat, also known as drink too much, eat too much, and have sex with co-workers you should never has sex with retreat, I found myself paired with Alan, my crush since the beginning of the dawn of my working for the company. He’s from Nashville and evidently according to gossip it was a tough decision whether he’d go into marketing or be the next Blake Shelton. Evidently, he went into marketing, much to my lascivious delight.

As assigned teams, we were supposed to follow the map to freedom and beer. Alan grinned at me and took the map.

“You fillies ain’t got a sense of direction,” he said, too cockily and too loudly.

Close-eyed, I dropped my chin to my chest. He just destroyed me. With one stupid phrase, he destroyed me. Now I could either let him continue to be my crush and lead us to failure or I could step up. While I tried to make my mind up, he was off and running.

“Crapola, you better have a good sense of direction,” I yelled as I tore off after him.

At the first fork, he stopped. He looked at me, his green eyes sorrowful. “After hearing about Boston, I trust you. I just had to keep face back there with Ditmeir.”

I rolled my eyes but took the map. Twenty-five minutes later running at full steam, zigzagging on the different paths, we reached the flag.

He grinned at me. “You’re pretty freaking fabulous. You wanna go out with me?”

Oh, irony, I love you. I smiled. “Maybe another time.”

He nodded, “Maybe when you get lost and come knocking at my door?”

I laughed. “Yeah, maybe then.”

end

Sascha Darlington