Purely Whimsical

Today I thought I’d share with you an experience I had driving through Anaheim, California.

I was looking for a knitting shop called Velona Needlecraft in Anaheim, CA.

Google Map link of the route from my hotel to the knitting shop.

Now, you’d think that 15 miles isn’t that far. Google does warn you that you could spend up to 30 minutes on this route during rush hour traffic. If you think about it, that means you’d have a top speed of what, 30mph? Well, that’s not sooo bad, right?

After an hour of sitting on the highway and not even driving the length of a football field, I found an exit and a parking lot and set my GPS to “shortest distance” and “avoid highways and freeways".

So about 15 minutes later I’m driving through Anaheim in this nice neighborhood. It’s something you’d expect to see on “Leave it to Beaver” or another show of that era. Small houses - maybe 1200 square feet at most - but well maintained with nicely manicured lawns.

I’m thinking about the knit shop, hoping it’s a little bit bigger than the last one I went to in Santa Ana. Meanwhile, I’m following the directions of the GPS, then I noticed it had gotten a little hot so I turned on the air conditioning. Then I noticed that my heartrate was a little high, and my knuckles were white on the steering wheel. I was really anxious! After thinking about it for a little bit, I realized something.

Have you ever watched the evening news after a drive by shooting where they did the talk with the “person on the street” who always and without fail describes the locale as a nice, quiet neighborhood? Then the camera does the pan, to show you the neighborhood… and it looks JUST LIKE something out of “Leave it to Beaver"?!

Dark and dirty alleyways in New York City didn’t make me anxious, but driving through a nice and neat California suburb did. Fear obviously does not have any logic and I’ve discovered that suburbs scare me.

Literally.

FYI- the yarn shop was much bigger. It was worth it.