Maize Confusion

The weather this weekend was nothing short of gorgeous. Seeing the sun shine against the bright blue sky made me feel both energized and happy. Knowing that I didn't want to be holed up all day captive to various football games constantly streaming on the television and computer, I decided to pack up the family (after donning our matching shirts of course) and drive to a corn maze.

Eager to "master the maze," we bypassed the winding line of participants in front of the information booth and entered the field. After all, we weren't interested in learning the history of the field; we just wanted to conquer the maze!

The maze was massive and, it turns out, quite complicated. Every few feet we encountered opportunities to make a directional decision designated by a number on a post. Novices at corn mazes, we quickly became confused and overwhelmed.

We let Robby make all of our directional choices. He had a blast being the leader, marching us up and down (and up and down again) the corn rows. We kept running into dead ends and I swear we walked in the same circle no fewer than four times. It turns out that Robby has inherited his sense of direction from both parents. There was no doubt about it--we were utterly lost in the maze of maize. I was frustrated that we were so pathetically discombobulated when our fellow navigators seemed to be flying through the field.

After about an hour of corn confusion, Robby stopped dead in his tracks. "Momom," he whispered. "Just stay calm, but I think I see the corn monster ahead. Give me your leg so I can whack him on the head. You can hop past him after I knock him out." I refused his offer, explaining that I needed my leg to walk and that Daddy could whack the corn monster. "No no no Momom. Just give me your leg. I'll give it right back, I just want to borrow it for awhile. Please Momom please.. just give me your leg. I promise to give it right back."

We proceeded to have a 10 minute conversation, filled with pleads for my prosthetic and my attempt at logic which must have been bewildering for eavesdroppers through the tall rows of corn. He was finally satisfied to yield a corn stalk to fend off a potential visit from the corn monster although he did tell me that he could not guarantee that we wouldn't get eaten. I decided that it was a risk worth taking. To be honest, I was just happy to be moving again even if it was in a seemingly never-ending and increasingly familiar loop.

We continued our trek through the corn until we came upon a group of people. I noticed that the adults were each holding a sheet of paper. When I asked them where they picked up a map, they showed me that they were holding the question sheet that accompanies the maze. Apparently, had we gone to the information booth before entering, we would have learned that the seemingly randomly placed numbers in fact corresponded with a multiple choice question. Answering the question correctly indicated that direction that should be taken.

Feeling foolish for bypassing the information booth and ignoring all of the numbers, and tired from schlepping through a dirty field for nearly 90 minutes, we dethroned Robby from his role as leader. We followed our fellow navigators through the maze, trying to keep a distance so they didn't realize the depths of our idiocy. After another 10 minutes we were led to an exit which was, ironically, the same place that we had entered.



<-- This is a photo of the Maze from above. We are fairly confident that we were looping around the rifle for about an hour...