Here is the only Where

After publishing my post, "It's 1969: Do You Know Where Your Mother Is?", it occurred to me that some of my students might just find and read it from my Facebook posting. Not so good. As a (former) teacher, I am/was supposed to be a paragon of virtue, behavior above and beyond reproach, with impeccable manners, if not timing. No runs in the pantyhose. Well, that's not me. Won't do at all. I am simply too complicated. Ergo, no longer a teacher. In public school. In California. Which is a shame, if you know me at all. Or not, if you know me well.
One of my favorite saying is, "You can't get lost if you don't know where you're going." Likewise, "You can't get there from here." That says it all.

I was in Borders looking for, of all things, a book. Seems like Borders has been Walmarted, carrying everything from chocolate and coffee, to pens and wrapping paper. I started looking for the hardware section, but ran out of time. I was also looking for a toolbelt.
The book I needed was for Danno's birthday, a good book on home repairs for his new job as Maintenance at a large apartment complex in Ashland. Large meaning 160 units. Maintenance meaning what they don't do in my apartment complex.
Storming in through the double doors after searching for parking for 10 minutes, after driving for half an hour searching for the right mall in a city apparently composed of malls surrounded by suburbs, the nouveau feudal American landscape, and clearly running out of time to shop in any meaningful way, I accosted the nearest Borders employee from 20 feet away, "Where are your handyman books?"
I had clearly startled her, no doubt. She jumped, and almost took her eyes off her computer monitor. She tipped her head in a very professorial mode and scanned me over her bi-focals. The wind I had created coming in rustled the pages of the magazines at the front of the store, which was deserted at 10 am on Good Friday.
She glanced to the left, and started giving directions, but I was already moving, having quickly located her focal point, and noticing the gigantic signs pinpointing specific genres. I could here her voice over the vague musical background in summation, "...But you can't get there from here."
That caught my attention.
You can't get there from here.
What an interesting notion.
I stopped mid-aisle.
"That's a great title," I called over my shoulder, en route to Home Improvement.
And so it is, if you Google it: books, stories, music, you name it. It clearly has fascinated better minds than mine in the past.
It wasn't until I had passed Western Fiction that it occured to me what a misnomer that statement is. If you can't get there from here, where can you get there from? Obviously you can only get there from here. Here is the only where to get anywhere from. (Grammar police, back off!)
It might not be easy. It might not be efficient. You might have to make a lot of turns. You might even have to back track, or get out a map, or even ask directions. But you certainly can get anywere from here.
No wonder it's such a popular title.

Picture credit: http://www.johnlund.com/images/JL-interchange__2FG.jpg