Lost Highway

Everyone's idea of hell is a little different. Some think it is a firey lake of fire, others, a void without meaning and still others, a treadmill while Celine Dion (the greatest singa in de world!) is playing on a continuous loop. I am here to tell you, they are all wrong. I experienced hell first hand yesterday, and it looks a lot like Pflugerville.

1pm - My adventure through Dante's Inferno started by my thinking lunch was a good idea. I live in Round Rock, lunch was but a short 5 minute drive to neighboring town, Pflugerville (a place where pfolks think it is pfunny to add a p to all 'f' words - it isn't.) The drive there was downright pleasant, baby peacefully asleep in the back, speakers playing one of the four CDs I desperately need to change. Lunch was pleasant, I had enchiladas, baby had avacado. These details are irrelivent but it is important to note that hell stalks its prey. I leave, hugging my family goodbye, not understanding fully what terror awaited me.

The minute the baby hit the carseat, it was on. I didn't know it at the time, but that little "feed me please" cry would soon become the soundtrack of my hell. At the time, I thought, 5 minutes and boom, home, nurse, nap. Well, somewhere between the restaurant and home, either I hit a wrong turn or Rod Sterling is somewhere eating his heart out.

1:05 - It started with a road block, so I turned into a subdivision to find an alternate route (something the police might have posted). I turned again, and again. Did that street look familar? As the baby's cries became more frantic I began to look around for a place to stop and feed him. If you have driven in Pflugerville, you know, it has two things in abundance. Suburbs and fields of nothing. So I had the choice of barbed wire or someone's driveway to feed my child.
1:15 - As the baby's wail hit a fever pitch, I saw it! Yes, a church! Surely, I would be welcomed there. As I approached, my heart dropped. It was the church I grew up in. The church who's members called me a prostitute for having a nose ring. I broke out in a cold sweat imagining trying to explain myself to the elders who would surely approach the car. "No, its okay!" I would explain, "I used to go here!" "Yes, I WAS ex-communicated, but that is not the point!" I imagined being dragged inside and being forced to recite the catechism and the 5 points of Calvinism. I drove on, wincing at the sound of my son slowly starving to death.

1:25 - Wells Branch!? What the heck!? Where AM I!? That was further South than I was for lunch! I have begun stroking my arm like an autistic child and rocking back and forth in my seat. Every stop light makes the baby cry even more. He has started his hurt cry, which sounds a little like skinning a cat...alive. My GPS system (redundant) doesn't work as it hasn't had an update in 5 years, so it would just be blank. I know baby, I know, I am so sorry soooo sorry!! Please, stop please?!?! We are almost home!! He could hear the panic, he knew I was bluffing, he redoubled his efforts.

1:33 - The baby has given up hope that he will ever be fed. He is gasping for air in his sleep. Tummy growling. I have failed as a mother. I was afraid when the baby stopped crying, it was as if his crying was what was driving me to find home. Without it, we might be lost forever.

1:42 - I find my way, through tears, to the tangle of familiar asphalt. The toll road. It was all I could do not to leap from my car and kiss the 45/130 sign on the side of the highway. I knew I was going home, that the tunnel had an end and it's name was Gattis.

1:45 - Having cheated death, satan and yes, evil itself, I pulled into my driveway. I madly laughed, eyes crazed. Middle finger raised in the to the South. Pfuck you Pflugerville!!! You thought you had me! I win!! IIIIII WIIIIIIINNNN!!!!!

5:00 - CT comes home to see me with baby to the breast, muttering psychoticly under my breath about cutesy german spelling and plans to level suburbia. I still twitch to this day.