Saturday night, Mr. W and I had plans to meet up with my cousins Diana and Jennifer plus other friends/coworkers of theirs at the Irvine Spectrum, an outdoors mall/entertainment center for dinner and possibly a movie. Navy Girl Vanessa just happened to call and say that she was planning to be at the Spectrum that night for a movie, too. We agreed to meet up there. Mr. W’s teen daughter had 2 girl friends with her, and the three of them had also planned to go to the Spectrum, so he and I drove the three of them there with us, where we separated.

Mr. W and I met up with my cousins, etc. and had dinner at California Pizza Kitchen, but decided to scrap the movie because of general disinterest in the movie my cousin Jennifer wanted to watch, Jack Black’s Nacho Libre. So after dinner, we all just stood around for a bit, chatting, and the group decided to go their own ways and go home. Just before that happened, we ran into Mr. W’s daughter with her friends, which had grown into a group including 5 or 6 punk rock-looking pierced boys. The kids disappeared pretty readily, with his daughter casting a guilty glance behind her in our direction as she hurried away. All of a sudden, I felt someone’s arm around me from my left, and it was Vanessa and her boyfriend having just come out of the movie theatre we happened to be standing in front of saying goodbye to everyone. Perfect timing! The four of us (me, Vanessa, and our men) wandered around Irvine Spectrum chatting when Mr. W got a phone call from his daughter to meet them at a food court.

When we got to the food court, his daughter said, “We have to go, now, cuz we gotta get one of our friends home.” Turned out the “friend” was some new teenager boy that she’d just met, longish black hair, pierced lip, fur-lined green jacket, jeans so tight that they looked like denim-patterned pantyhose, a studded black belt, and canvas shoes that were frayed around the edges to look like they spread out. The daughter asked if we could take another person, as well. Mr. W said we don’t even have room to take the boy that was coming with us now, because we now have 6 people who are going to cram into a truck. Regretfully, we left Vanessa and her boyfriend and went on our way.

We asked the boy where he lived, and he said off Harbor and Adams. We didn’t know where that was, but he said it was just off the freeway. It was now 11pm, 2 hours past Mr. W’s normal bedtime, and Harbor off the 5 freeway was way off course by 15 miles. There were strange traffic jams, and Mr. W made the other girls call home to say they were gonna be an hour later than promised due to his new detour. So we got off on Harbor, and Mr. W asked the boy where to go from there. The boy hesitatingly said to turn left.
Mr. W: Are you sure?
(Silence from the back seat.)
Mr. W’s daughter: No, he’s not sure.
(But we turn left anyway.)
Boy: We don’t usually go from here, so I’m not sure of the area, but I think this is right. It’d be faster if you get back on the freeway.
Mr. W: And get off where?
Boy: On Harbor.
Mr. W: This IS Harbor. You said you live off Harbor and Adams, and there’s no Adams exit, so this is the only place you can get off. (We drive by Disneyland.) You live in Anaheim, right?
Boy: No, I live in Costa Mesa.
(Mutual silent gasp throughout the car. We had gone 15 miles northwest to get from Irvine to Anaheim, and now he was telling us to go 15 miles south from Anaheim to Costa Mesa. Well, he didn’t tell us. It would’ve been easier if he had told us anything at any point when we were going in the wrong direction.)
Mr. W: So you live off the 405 freeway, not the 5 freeway.
Boy: Uh…
Mr. W: We went north on the 5 and got off on Harbor. You live off of Harbor off the 405 freeway, nor Harbor off of the 5 freeway.
Boy: (sounding confused, as if it had never occured to him that there’s more than 1 freeway in California) Yeah. …?
We didn’t get home until way past midnight.