Lost in Boston

Sometimes, very strange things happen to people who don't deserve the punishment.

Late, late, late on Saturday night, little brother calls me on his cell phone. He's lost, somewhere outside Boston, in the rain, in the dark, trying to get back to Rhode Island.

I have never been to Boston, never been anywhere near it.

But somehow he assumes I can help him. Or at least comfort him until he runs out of gas.

I pull out the only thing of use that State Farm Insurance ever gave me, a well-worn Atlas of the US.

We spend the next 45 minutes trying to figure out where on the map he is, then getting him off the toll road he drifted onto, when he somehow missed the I-95 interchange. Repeatedly, he has to be convinced not to take various side roads.

He finally makes it back to the freeway and I wearily hang up. Two hours later, the phone rings again, just as I have finally managed to get back to sleep. Another side road has been taken and he is lost again.

Out comes the atlas again and he is once more directed back onto the proper road.

I have a family reputation as a great navigator. It's a survival skill, developed growing up in a military family where my world changed completely every three years.

I am -- justifiably, I think -- quite proud that I successfully managed, with only an atlas to assist me, to help brother safely find his way from somewhere I've never been to somewhere else I've never been either, in the middle of the night.

It's not that's he's brain-dead. He's a smart boy. He makes five times as much money as I do, at a very prestigious job. He's just not a navigator, I suppose. He came to maturity after dad had retired, and so he didn't have to handle such upsets.

As for me, today I am very, very tired. Which makes Monday even more horrible than it usually is.