About car rentals and drawbridges

When I say my December trip to Washington D.C. was perfect, I am not lying.

Nothing major went wrong and a lot of things went right.

My August trip to the city was not perfect. I made a lot of dumb mistakes because I was nervous, and looking back, those mistakes are pretty funny.

What was I nervous about, you might be asking?

First of all, the entire premise of this trip is weird at best. Going to a wedding of people that you’ve hung out with twice is kind of weird. Okay, very weird, but rum is rum and Tiffany is Tiffany and that’s just that.

Second, I had to rent a car. That itself scared the shit out of me in a way that I can can barely explain.

First off, there’s the physical act of renting a car, something I’ve never done before. I went to a different airport to pick the car up, and there were a ton of people and very long lines involved.

I get up to the counter and the very nice attendant’s computer freezes when I go to pay. It was absolutely a technology issue on their part, but I automatically assumed I did something wrong and was going to be arrested for illegal car renting or for wearing a cute dress in an airport or something.

Illegal use of formal attire.

So that issue gets sorted out, and I thought this would be some kind of top shelf experience. I thought they would bring a car to me, roll out a red carpet, and personally hold my hand and invite me in.

The reality? They turn you loose in a giant parking garage and you just kind of figure it out.

There are no actual human beings around to help you, just a bunch of lost people in a parking garage mumbling and cussing under their breath.

There was one car left in the economy section for me, and to say that it was not the car that I agreed to rent is an understatement.

The car that was waiting for me was a damn box on wheels. It was so embarrassingly small that I refused to take a photo of it — I was too humiliated to admit it was mine.

I’m 5’3”, and there’s no way anyone a half-inch taller than me would be able to fit in it. Anyone taller than me would be able to throw the stupid car over the bridge into the river.

Speaking of water, it turns out that there are things called drawbridges in the Northeast.

I’m afraid of water. I’ve gotten in bodies of water that I couldn't see the bottom three times willingly in my adult life, and I have no intention of ever doing it again.

I don’t like drawbridges.

And do you think they stop you on land if the bridge needs to come up? Of course not — they stop you in the middle of the effing bridge using a stoplight.

Shouldn’t there be like a real, live person with a flag or something telling you to stop or you’ll die?!?

By the way, for everyone reading this, there’s never been water in the river in my hometown in my lifetime.

Where I’m from, we drive on land, not above water.

I don’t like it.

And my rental car was so small that if had gotten into a minor fender bender that stupid car would have been smashed, and I would have veered off the bridge and ended up as fish bait.

I HATE WATER.

I don’t even know what to say about driving in D.C., except if you say your prayers, scream a few times, wear your seatbelt and sometimes close your eyes, you might survive.

It’s so bad that it’s funny.

You have to wing and a prayer it, which is fitting. It’s my preferred way of getting through life.

I also lost my car in the Kansas City airport parking garage on the way back home. I pride myself on having an excellent sense of direction and rarely getting lost.

I was lost this whole trip, down to the very last seconds of it.

I'm not sorry about it.

Shit happens.