In Her Seventies

The closest distance between any two points in Marjorie's home state involved roadways she refused to take, much to the chagrin of her passengers, both fair-weather acquaintances with whom she sat on political committees and lifelong friends visiting from afar. 

Marjorie was inordinately fond of shepherding people from point a to point b, sensing that any other choice of driver presented persnickety issues, quite different in Marjorie's mind from her own performance as chauffeur.

It would be fair to declare that Marjorie was nothing if not self-confident, meaning not only her belief in her own critical thinking and choices among alternative courses of action, but especially her ability to predetermine routes for reaching destinations with passengers in tow.

Not to put too fine a point on the issue of roadways, Marjorie despised freeways in general, ardently voicing objections notably to their tiny square signage in the style of California, especially since her home turf was in the Eastern United States, as insufficiently positioned ahead of turnoffs, the sine qua non of adequate roads.

Marjorie mapped out each set of quirky directions to restaurants, museums, and a host of other attractions comprising destinations she'd carved out for herself and her hapless passengers, usually involving winding, hilly residential streets replete with stop signs and pedestrians, many of whom jaywalked, requiring ardent attention to each fraction of street. 

On one particular day, she spied in her rear view mirror flashing red and blue lights and pulled off to the right, and up to her window strode a young woman Marjorie thought she recognized, one of her former students who used to sit in the front row, who asked for license and registration, to which Marjorie responded, "Juliet, don't tell me it's you!"