Tips for Active communication

Now although Emily and I have been friends for around 16 years or so, we still lack the sense to listen to each other, which results in many disasters. One of my personal favorite stories that exemplifies this point was on a trip to Washington D.C.

In order to fully understand the hilarity of this story, I must start from the beginning. Emily and I decided that we wanted to go to D.C. in the beginning of January before the spring semester started up. We both like historical things, and it had been a very long time since either of us had been there.

Our original plan was for us to wake up really early in morning to drive there, spend the whole day, leave late that night and drive back. This idea was quickly thrown out by my mother, who booked a motel room for us on a military base right outside of D.C. (My mother is retired from the Army).

So they day of the trip comes and there are winter storm warnings everywhere. From Pittsburgh to D.C. – it was going to be bad, but it wasn’t going to hit until a few hours into our trip, so being that Emily and I are stubborn, much to the dismay of my father and later we found out Frank, we decided to risk it.

While I was getting my last few things packed, I gave Emily the Tom-Tom and told her to program the address that the motel. She then told me that I had written the address down wrong because it was not showing up in the GPS system, but she had figured it out.

We got to D.C. safely, luckily we out ran the winter storm. Now here is a little fact about myself – I have a very small bladder, and on road trips I have to stop a lot. A little bit outside of the city I told Emily that I had to pee and that if we saw a place, stop. Well as we were passing a gas station I told her to pull over, she thought that I was saying this so we could ask for directions because of a road closure that Tom-Tom refused to detour us around, so she said “No, we are fine,” and passed the gas station. I then yelled at her that it was because I had to pee, she claimed that she forgot but would pull over at the next place we saw…little did she know that there wasn’t a place for over an hour.

When then drove around lost (because guess what, military bases do not show up on GPS’s, a fact that was unknown to us, but in reality makes a lot of sense) for what seemed like forever, looking for a place for me to pee. It came down to us sitting at a light in a traffic circle and me spotting at hotel. I turned to Emily and told her I was going to run to the hotel and for her to try and stay on the traffic circle and I would meet her at the next light.

Without a jacket on and shoes half off, I ran for the hotel. Finding the bathroom in the hotel was like a mouse finding a piece of cheese in a maze. Crazy. After I found the bathroom and came outside in the sleeting freezing weather, I call Emily on her phone asking her where she is. She is laughing so hard that I can not understand here. So I get frustrated because while she is sitting in heated car, I am freezing my ass off. So I yell at her where are you and she tells me to start walking south, so I do just that but instead of walking I start running because I’m cold.

One again She starts laughing to a point where I can’t understand her, while she is telling me to slow down I think she that she says speed up. So I keep running and she keeps laughing. I am about a block away before she finally stops and says turn around and come back. Frank meets me half way and takes me to where they are parked.

Moral of the Story: Emily needs to learn how to listen and remember little facts such as Katie needing to go the bathroom so we don’t have to drive in circles around DC for two hours looking for a place for Katie to pee.