January 24, 2006

Tonight I was driving Maria and Jen home.
Maria had moved to a new house and my brother usually took the bus there,
so nobody really knew how to drive to her house.
We took the Grand Central Parkway to her exit and my brother kept telling me
to turn at the last minute and getting his lefts confused with his other left.

Once she was dropped off,
my brother announced that he didn’t know how to get home from here.
We drove around and tried to retrace our steps and eventually found our way back to the Grand Central Parkway.

Since we took the Grand Central Parkway to Maria’s place,
we took it back.
Going to Jen’s place I usually take the Van Wyck,
but we could also take the Jackie Robinson,
which was more convenient from the Grand Central,
so we took it.
Unfortunately I hadn’t taken the Jackie Robinson in a while,
and neither had Jen.

I thought we were supposed to get off at the Metropolitan Avenue exit,
but she insisted that we were supposed to get off at Union Turnpike.
Two exits after the Metropolitan Avenue exit,
we realized that we had gone too far.
Jen calls her mom who confirms that we were supposed to get out at the Metropolitan Avenue exit.

So I get out at the next exit and look for the entrance to the Jackie Robinson going the other way.
We couldn’t really find anything, except that we were surrounded by graves on all sides,
and when we finally got on to local roads,
we were in the scary streets of Cypress Hills.
We quickly doubled back onto the graveyard road and found our way back onto Jackie Robinson West.

Once on there, I realized that we were supposed to be going East.
So we exited at the next exit again and this time found the East entrance much quicker and were on our way to Jen’s.

We arrive at Jen’s, exhausted.
I drop her off and I drive home.

As we were dropping off Maria we had passed by a place called “Nice Ices”,
where I picked up an Italian ice craving.
So as I was driving my brother back,
I asked him if he wanted to go for some Slurpees,
the closest thing to an Italian ice we could get at this time.

We arrive outside the 7-Eleven and I parked next to a puddle of water.
My brother opens the door, I hear a “plop”, and my brother goes,
“Oh, shit.”
I walk around the car to see what dropped in the water,
but all we see is a single woman’s shoe.
We debated a bit about whether it was the shoe or something else that dropped in the water
and if we should pick it up.
We didn’t want to leave the shoe if it was ours,
but we definitely didn’t want to pick up a random shoe out of a puddle and bring it home.
Finally I realized that if this shoe came out of our car,
there should be a matching shoe in the car,
and told my brother to look in the car for it.
Unfortunately, he found it, so we had to pick it up.
Neither one of us wanted to touch it, so he found some napkins and picked up the shoe,
shook some of the water out of it, and tossed it in the back seat.

We finally went into the 7-Eleven and got our Slurpees.
My brother also a tacquito or something.
We went to pay for the food and the guy charged me four something.
I paid for it, but then he pointed to my brother’s tacquito and said that he didn’t charge me for that.
I thought, “Oh, how generous!”
I turned to leave but my brother stood his ground.
I asked him what was wrong,
and he told me that the guy didn’t charge for the tacquito.
I said, “yeah, so?”
Then it dawned on me that he wasn’t actually giving it to me for free,
he just made a slip-up and wanted me to pay for it.

What a night.