Paths and Suchlike

Dipsomania Bonanza took the Path Less Travelled and that is why she became lost.

            The first indication that Dipsomania Bonanza was lost was when she realized that she didn’t know where she was. The Path Less Travelled, being Less Travelled and therefore not officially a path, was not marked on her Ordnance Survey Map. And besides, her Ordnance Survey Map was in the car, which Dipsomania Bonanza had parked in the Car Park Less Parked In.

            Being a practical sort, though not practical enough to have brought an Ordnance Survey Map with her, Dipsomania Bonanza decided to stop and ask one of the locals for help. One of the locals explained to her that the Bus Less Caught would be along in a minute.

            True enough, within a couple of minutes, the Bus Less Caught hove into view. Unfortunately, it failed to stop at the Bus Stop Less Stopped At.

            Dipsomania Bonanza sat down by the Path Less Travelled and examined her motives for deciding to walk along the Path Less Travelled.

            I wanted to be different, she thought. I didn’t want to follow the path that the majority followed. I wanted to assert my unique otherness. Dipsomania Bonanza came to the realization that, in a life lived only once, the path which you travel along, even the one trodden by many others before you, is a path which has not yet been travelled by you at all.

            Knowing that her life was a life not yet travelled, she made her way back to the Car Park Less Parked In and drove her car back along the Road Less Travelled (suddenly a road; why no longer a path? It’s a metaphor: road/path; ‘path’ is in the poem by Robert Frost, hence is more ‘authentic’ whereas ‘road’ is more ‘a la mode’…)

            CRASH!

            Dipsomania Bonanza, having been abandoned by her author, had driven blindly, headlong into a brick wall.

                                                            *

MORAL: Sometimes it’s better to walk along the Path Less Travelled, especially if the author is unreliable.