It was a very simple errand. We needed a stick of butter so we could make marijuana brownies. Shelby and I were going to go pick up the butter, and my sister was going to sleep on the couch in the living room. It was a simple errand and a simple plan- save for the fact that the three of us were entirely too lost in the part of Omaha we were in.
Shelby was house sitting and we were looking to get high. Not just a little high, mind you, but mind-blowingly high. The kind of high that makes you think extra hard about everything and makes time slow down.
This required cooking. We’d just introduced Shelby to the wonders of cooking with marijuana the week before. It’s one of my favorite highs to be honest, though it generally makes me incapable of driving a car or doing anything more difficult than smoking more pot. I like the laziness though. I like the feeling that everything just might have an alternative purpose that needs figured out.
We’d smoked before leaving to go to the store which had brought up a good question-
Was there a grocery store around?
Shelby knew there was a Walgreen’s and we spent a few minutes trying to determine if Walgreen’s sold butter. It seemed unlikely, but as Shelby pointed out, “don’t they try to carry everything so you can just go one place all the time?”
“Touche. ”
We left the neighborhood after a little bit of confusion on how road round-a-bouts work and made our way to “F” street. We were still looking for Walgreen’s when we happened across a Hy-Vee.
“Solved!” I said.
“Indeed,” said Shelby.
The Grocery stores in West Omaha are gigantic and very spacious. We wandered around looking for butter and couldn’t find it.
“If I was butter where would I be?”
“We should pretend we’re on a road trip.”
“Maybe they’ll have a inflatable butter stick above that section.”
We finally found a stocking crew who helped us in the right direction. It was nearly on the complete other side of the Hy-Vee. We got the butter and got out of Hy-Vee. It was time to take up our pretend road trip.
“Where are we driving?” Shelby asked.
“Wyoming?”
“Wyoming!”
So we talked back and forth about Wyoming. And Nebraska. And driving across it.
I can’t say exactly when it was that we figured out we were lost, because I didn’t know where I was at to begin with. But we figured out that we didn’t know where we were going. The biggest problem with that entire part of Omaha is that all of the neighborhoods loop around and around and all look remarkably the same. We couldn’t figure out where we were long enough to not get lost again.
Oh we were laughing about it. The numbered streets kept increasing and the lettered ones were moving the wrong way in the alphabet. Just as sure as we’d start back in the right direction, we’d find ourselves further back than before.
We ended up on a dirt road by some storages units and I started giggling.
“You’re just bringing me out to dump my body off, aren’t you?” I asked.
We giggled more and saw a deer running by the road.
“We should probably turn around again.”
I shrugged. Sure, why not? Not like I knew where I was anyway.
I don’t mind being lost when I don’t have anywhere to be. I don’t mind being lost when the company is good enough. We rounded some more twists and turns and swerved into a muddy patch skidding on the road.
I managed to murmur “oh shit!” but it was really just an after thought. Skidding doesn’t even phase me if I’m not behind the wheel. The whole situation was still funny and moments later we were laughing again and driving onward to wherever.
“This calls for Bowie. Bowie will save,” said Shelby and she fumbled around with a tape in her tape deck. Bowie was good. Bowie was what we needed. Give us this day our daily Bowie. Forgive us our trespasses, Ziggy Stardust.
We kept driving. The roads all looked the same. We kept trying to follow the compass on the car, but kept also forgetting about it.
“I would not be surprised if this road ended right he-” Shelby started to say, just as we rounded a corner into an unfinished road. We were laughing again. The moon was a perfect Orange right inside of a pocket of night clouds. We sat there staring at it for a moment and taking it all in, minds opened wide by THC and the excitement of a small adventure.
It was about then that my sister called us.
“Where the hell are you guys?”
“We’re not sure,” I said. After all, we weren’t. We’d been gone for over an hour.
It was then that we rolled onto “Q” street. We were supposed to be at “F”.
“We’re not lost now,” Shelby said.
“We’re not lost now,” I repeated into my phone.
We started the drive back, too far north and too far west, again- but this time with a sense of location and direction.
