Book of Daze: Take the Wrong Turn
For centuries, we humans have been rushing to take the wrong turn, driven by the hubris that we know a better way–over mountains, through deserts, and around the next left that clearly should have been a right.
Take the wrong turn day celebrates this proud refusal to follow directions, the stubborn faith that your personal sense of the earth’s magnetic field is more trustworthy than satellites and signs.
Take the Wrong Turn Launch
Each year, celebrants pack their cars with snacks, bottled water, and the unreasonable conviction that “this shortcut saves at least ten minutes.” They launch into take the wrong turn day by deliberately ignoring the turn-by-turn instructions of their GPS, silencing its polite robotic protests. The truly devout drive past three exits in a row while insisting they merely want to “see some back roads.”
Tradition requires that we eventually circle the same cloverleaf at least three times before pulling into a gas station to consult a man in a trucker hat who begins his instructions with the immortal phrase, “You can’t get there from here.”
Like all sacred rites, take the wrong turn day has its relics. Commemorative souvenirs include outdated road atlases curled like dried leaves in glove compartments, faded AAA TripTiks still marked with ballpoint arrows from family vacations past, and paper maps so large they require a co-pilot to wrestle them open.
City vs Country
The brave honor this holiday by navigating entirely on memory–usually the recall of a road that was rerouted in 1994.
Urban participants often reenact the historic wrong turn of Christopher Columbus, who confidently set sail for Asia and landed, instead, on a continent inconveniently in the way.
Rural devotees tell of legendary wrong turns that end at dead-end dirt roads with a lone goat standing in judgment. Every story concludes with the same line: “But it felt shorter.”
On take the wrong turn day, we do not ask where we are going. We merely celebrate the scenic detour that leads us everywhere except where we intended.
For additional Book of Daze entries that celebrate other days that ought not to exist either.
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