I met my best friend our senior year in high school. We’ve been friends now for close to twenty years. We have been through all of life’s great milestones together. We graduated High School together, went to college together, celebrated turning twenty-one together, stood up for each other at our weddings and experienced raising families together. We have had dozens of hilariously crazy stories together but the first time we were ever in a blunder, was what truly cemented our friendship.
We grew up in a rural town in Washington State about two hours from the Canadian border. Shortly after graduation, while I was dating my husband who was serving in the United States Navy, we drove up to Bellingham. We were new in our friendship and this was the first time it would be just the two of us. Our plan was to shop at the mall, eat dinner and then head back home. I spoke to my husband on my very first cell phone shortly before leaving, letting him know what I was doing. He was hanging out with some friends on base and I could hear them all yelling “Hi” to me from behind him.
We have a great time shopping, eating and getting to know each other a little better. We pull out of the mall parking lot. She is driving and the sun is extremely bright, blurring my vision. I give her directions to the freeway while feeling a nagging headache coming on. I close my eyes and ask her. “Do you see the sign for I-5 south?”
“Yep, I see it. We’re good.” She replies.
I lean back in the seat as we enter the freeway. We talk while my eyes are closed and at some point I drift off to sleep. We drive for what feels like an extremely long time. I open my eyes for a moment and notice we are crossing a bridge and a river I don’t recognize. I shrug it off, I’m not very observant as it is. More time passes and then I hear my friend exclaim in a frightened voice.
“Wake up! Wake up! What is this? What do we do?”
Hearing the panic in her voice, I bolt upright and take in my surroundings. She is pointing to a white arch up ahead.
“What is that?” She asks me.
I blink, feeling disoriented for only a minute and then exclaim. “That’s the Peace Arch! The border crossing. You have driven us to Canada!”
“Oh no!” She cries out. “That must be customs! We are in line to cross over into Canada! What do we do?”
“There’s nothing we can do!” I half-yell at her. “We’ll have to just go through the border and explain to them what we’ve done.”
“They’re not going to believe us!” She cries out.
Right before, full on panic mode sets in, we find a place by the arch to turn around and safely head the other way. We start arguing and pointing fingers at each other. I can’t figure out how she didn’t realize she had taken the northbound freeway entrance. She is claiming that I was the one giving the directions.
Our phones start ringing, her mom is calling her, worried about the fact we’re late. My husband calls me, also wondering the same thing. In frustration, I tell him what happened. He’s extremely quiet on the other end and then he bursts out laughing. He promptly tells all of his friends. They start laughing on the other end. My best friend’s mom and family are laughing on the other end. We are driving and listening to our families and a group of rowdy sailors all laughing at us.
Finally, we start laughing as well and I mean laughing so hard we almost have to pull over. I knew then, we were best friends for life. Who can even admit to such a story? How could we have driven for that long and not have realized we were heading for Canada? As I grow older, I believe the universe was the cause of that mishap. We needed each other and nothing causes a better ice breaker, than an accidental trip to the Canadian Border.
