How I narrowly escaped being a reader's digest story
by Jenna

I had an absolutely awesome day right up until about 5:30pm.  I had breakfast
with my dad.  he made omlettes.  They were yummy and the converstaion was
good, as usual.  I cherish our sunday morning breakfast ritual.

And then I went to youth group and we didn't do any work becasue luann wasn't
there and our other two youth group leaders are laid back.   We talked about
urban legends the whole time.  That was good fun as well.

After that I was going to go skiing but I was tired so I decided to go to the
library and do some research on manzanar while I was already downtown in
Ithaca.  I found some great books.  I really like doing research.  Maybe I am
abnormal but when I find something I'm interested in I can pour over books
for hours and not get bored.  And that's just what I did.

Around 3:30, I checked everything out (including another banana book called
lizard) and went to wegmans for some lunch.  I ended up getting sushi, well
sort of, it was really a nori roll because there was no fish I guess.  I
don't really know how the system works for naming it, but this is not an
integral part to the story really.  I didn't realize the theme to the
beginning of my day until I was paying for the sushi.  manzanar, banana
yoshimoto and then sushi...

I took my food and new yoshimoto book to treman park in Ithaca and ate and
read and took a walk and read some more.  It was such a beautiful day.  The
sky was so blue, it didn't seem real.  I was loving it.  Eventually I got
cold and decided to head home.  That was about 5:00, very close to my day's
5:30 decline.

I was going home on back roads that I was sort of familiar with but I had
only driven on them once before.  Nonetheless, I was confident that I knew
where I was going enough to venture off the roads that I had taken before to
get a better look at the sunset.  I wished I had my camera so much.  I have
never seen such a beautiful sunset and it seemed like the perfect close to an
altogether very nice day.  That is until I got lost.  You have to realize
that I have the worst possible sense of direction in the world, and somewhere
on the way back to the road,I took a wrong turn and got lost.  very very
lost.

But I wasn't worried.  It was still light out, I had time before my dad was
expecting me home, and the radio station I was listening to was playing good
music.  I actually enjoyed the driving and thinking for a little while.  So I
decided that the best thing to do was keep heading in the general direction
that I was going before, aiming somewhere between the sunset and the lake-
North east approximately.  This might have been an ok strategy if I had
stuck with it but I started trying to take roads that "seemed right".  I
didn't run into any roads that I was familiar with until much later when I
saw a road that I had been on on the way to Lucy's new years party on the
other side of Ithaca in Newfield...way off the beaten path.  That was when I
started to get worried.

I had no idea where to go.  I tried to find Lucy's house but ended up getting
more lost.  I was so so so far out in the middle of nowhere.  I had firmly
made up my mind that I was going to ask the next people I saw for directions.
 The next people I saw were about 4 and 6 years old and they weren't much
help.  Those were the last people I saw for quite awhile.  So I kept driving.
 I had plenty of gas after all and I would just phone my dad after I got
myslef out of this mess to tell him I would be late.  I calmed down a bit.

And I stayed calm right up until I got my car stuck following someone's
tracks on a road that I didn't realize wasn't plowed at all underneath.  It
was really stuck.  I actually had some experience getting stuck and unstuck
on friday night in Jake's driveway but I also had 3 girls and jake's next
door neighbor to help me out.  I was definetly starting to get scared.  I
couldn't get my car out no matter what I treid.  And I tried everything.
digging, reverse, pushing, neutral...and all sorts of combonations of those
things.  I knew that nobody with any brains was going to come down that road
and that if I waited by the car I would be sleeping there overnight.  So
after awhile I decided that I would just have to start walking back down the
road until I got to a house or I so could flag someone down.  I was very
scared.  This is where I started thinking I was going to become a reader's
digest horror story.  I tried not to panic though.

The first house I came to was really sketchy...and all sorts of images and
stereotypes came flooding back to me of mean, snowmobiling, rednecks with
shotguns that would rape me and throw me in a ditch. And I was the
stereotypical victim as well- a young, helpless 17 year old girl...My karate
gave me no security at that moment. It was completely irrational, and I hate
that those stereotypes are so ingrained in me... but I was scared, and
irrational.  I even thought of how hyppocritical I was being after just
giving you a schpiel about how much faith I had in human nature and all that.
 But nevertheless, I kept walking...sure there would be more housees soon.
And there were.

These 2 houses looked much nicer, that is excpet for the barking growling
dogs.  I have had to deal with a lot of dogs in all my days of walking to
school and I knew enough to coo them and not be scared of them and be calm so
they wouldn't smell any fear and attack me...but I also knew enough that if
you tried to walk down the driveway of their masters you couldn't predict how
they would react.  So I walked by these houses too.  I was sure there would
be a car or a house soon.

I had been walking maybe 10 minutes after that, and maybe 30 minutes
altogether when I realized how stupid I had been.  It was dark and cold and I
left my hat, gloves, swiss army knife, matches, first aid kit, flashlight,
sweater, food, water, flares, etc all in the car.  I contemplated going back
and getting all that stuff, but then decided that I was bound to come across
another house soon, or a car would drive by.  I mean how far out could I
really be?

But there were no more houses.  Not even sketchy ones.  One car passed and I
treid to flag them down but they swerved aournd me and kept going.  I was
trying not to cry, telling myslef it would waste energy to be upset and I was
already cold enough.  I thought about my dad, and wondered if he was worried
yet.  And how long he would wait before he came looking for me or called the
police. But this wasn't comforting considering he thought I had been skiing
at greek peak all day and wouldn't have any reason to think that I would be
in Newfield on Connecticut hill. I thought of a lot of things.   I thought of
you too, and I actually wondered what you would do in my situation.  But I
didn't know.  I just kept walking. I felt very stupid recalling all the
choices I'd made that day.

About an hour after I left my car (though it could have been 5 hours if you'd
asked me then), there was finally another set of headlights. I was much more
active in flagging them down this time.  They pulled over and my fears of
redneck stereotypes were dispelled by a nice middle aged woman and her two
20-something sons.  I told them that I had gotten my car stuck and asked them
if they could take me to a pay phone.  They ended up having a cell phone with
them and I called my dad there on the street.  At the sound of his voice I
burst into tears and it took some time for me to spit out what was the
matter.  In the end I ended up giving the cell phone to the woman in the car
and she told him what was up.

They took me to a convenience store in Newfield and my dad came and got me.
I only had to wait about a half hour- he must have really speeded.  As soon
as I got in the car I burst into tears again.  It was rather traumatic. My
dad and I managed to find my car again, and even with the two of us we
couldn't get it out of the snow by oursleves.  So he tied a rope to his car
and pulled me out that way. Thank goodness.  I was so relieved.  and the
drive howm was pretty uneventful.  When I got home we talked about it some
more, and I just talked about how scary it was.  And then I curled up with
banana yoshimoto and went to bed.  The end.