By Tim Sanders

A couple of weekends ago my wife and I had just eaten at the local Mexican restaurant. As we and others headed across the parking lot to our vehicles, there was a cacophony of honking. Let me explain: the honking had nothing to do with our refried beans backfiring on us. No, there was a flock of geese flying overhead. It was an impressive sight–maybe fifty geese all flying in that familiar V-formation so popular with geese. I couldn’t see their license plates, but I am relatively sure they were what we used to call "Canadian geese" before we learned that they were actually "Canada geese." Since it was a genuine Canada Canuck who gave us that information, I'm sure it was true. Whatever the case, this splendid flock obviously had no interest in Mexican food. The geese flew in a northeasterly direction, possibly headed for Weiss Lake and some delicious fish dinners. Suddenly one of the flock made a U-turn and headed southwest, back toward wherever they’d come from.

Marilyn and I discussed this anomaly later, unsure as to whether that goose had left something behind, forgotten its medication, or had some sort of a falling out with the squadron leader. We never came to any real conclusion, because we knew nothing about goose psychology.

Then the following article appeared in last Tuesday’s Macon Telegraph:

Missing women safe after 24-hour road trip

by Tim Sturrock
Telegraph Staff Writer

It took 24 hours and detours to Birmingham, Al., Atlanta and Macon before 72-year-old Alice Atwater found her way back home to Upson County after a trip to church.

"We tried to find our way home and the more we tried the farther we went," she said. "I wasn’t scared. We just locked the car doors and rolled."

Alice Atwater and her two friends, Florence King, 86, and Ruthelle Outler, 84, were reported missing after they were last seen leaving Mount Moriah Baptist Church in Griffin at 6:30 p.m. Sunday.

The trio of women went to the Griffin church more than 20 miles away from their homes to hear a particular preacher. Shortly before 8 p.m. Monday, they returned to Thomaston.

Their disappearance caused friends, family and law enforcement to search the area as media outlets referred people with information to the Griffin Police Department and Upson County Sheriff’s Office.

All that was news to Atwater when she was pulled over by a Thomaston police officer Monday evening, she said.

"He said,'Did you know they have a APB on you?' and I said 'no,'" she said.

Atwater said the women stopped for gas and food, and she couldn’t explain why she didn’t call her family to tell them where she was. Atwater was cheerful Monday night and laughed loudly in an interview. She said she was tired after driving for more than 24 hours without sleep ...

Well, go ahead and call me a sexist, but the three old ladies on their endless road trip was no surprise to me. If you’re a man, and have ever been sandwiched in a back seat between a couple of women, with another two or three up front, piloting the vehicle, then you know what happens:

"And then Beverly had the nerve to tell me–wait, weren’t you supposed to turn back there, Denise?"

"Didn’t Momma say to go past the church and then turn?"

"Well, yes, but she didn’t say if it was the Congregational Holiness church, or the Baptist church, or the Methodist church."

"Oh, that’s silly. I’ve been out here before, and I’m sure I’ll know it when I see it. You were out here last year, weren’t you, Janet?"

"I was, but Cecil was driving, and my sinuses were acting up, so I didn’t notice the turnoff. Besides, I think we came another way."

"Oh, look, there’s another church, and there’s a road right past it. I’ll turn there."

"Which way did Momma say to turn?"

"She didn’t say. Let’s turn left, that seems right. No wait, that doesn’t look familiar to me, I’ll just keep going."

"What about that other road, the one over there–oh, you just went past it!"

"I didn’t see that one. I was redoing my lipstick."

At this point, if you are a man riding in that clueless carload of estrogen vapors, you are ready to climb over one or two of the ladies and bail out the window while you are still in your home state.

So what does all of this have to do with the wrong-way goose episode? My theory is that it was Gladys the Goose’s turn to lead the flying wedge, and while her friends were honking away like females of any species will do on a trip to God knows where, the whole aerial circus became disoriented. Finally poor old Leon, probably the only gander in the bunch, concluded that Gadsden was obviously in the other direction and broke rank. Trying to talk sense to that bunch of females would have been futile.

I explained my theory to Marilyn. She said that she thought geese mated for life, so there should certainly have been more than one gander in the flock. And even if there was just one, she was sure he didn’t leave of his own volition.

"If female geese are anything like their human counterparts, they fly by pure intuition," she said. "And that intuition never fails to get you where you are going, if you just have a little patience. And if that gander was trying to interject some silly aeronautical principles into the flight plan, and making a general nuisance of himself honking and tootling about specific landmarks or maps or mileage estimates, his wife and all of her widow friends in the flock may well have forcibly ejected him from their formation. And not a minute too soon, either."

Last November, Jim Ed Defenthaler of Signal Mountain, Tennessee was found wandering along a dirt road outside of Dawson Creek, British Columbia. He’d been unceremoniously ejected from the car in that remote and desolate region by his wife, his mother-in-law, and two sisters after merely hinting that possibly they should have turned left rather than right onto Highway 24 on their way to a funeral in Chattanooga.

Just to play it safe, I made a mental note to avoid forcible ejection by keeping my mouth shut when my wife is driving. After all, the three old ladies did find their way back to Thomaston from Griffin, some 20 miles away ... and it only took them 24 hours.