A friend recently sent me the photo to the left.

Since blonde is only my chosen but not natural hair color at the moment, I did not take offense.

Even in the days when blonde really was my natural hair color, I would have found it funny… in an absurd kind of way… Just the way it was intended.

I was reminded of an old comedy bit.  I no longer can remember who performed the vaudeville-like routine; probably a Dick Van Dyke or a Donald O’Connor

(yup – I know I am dating myself a bit)

In the routine, a drunk runs into a lamppost, stumbles around for a bit and walks into it again, and again, and again.  In the end, defeated, having walked into a lamppost from every direction, he declares himself surrounded…by a single lamppost.

I was listening to the radio yesterday, though, and heard the report that a family had gotten lost in a corn maze.  Looking at photos online, I did confirm that the maze was significantly more complex than the one in the picture.  It truly was a maze in which one might find oneself lost, but is that really newsworthy?

Well, yes.  It became news when the family called 911.

Seriously.

I get that they had children with them.  I get that the sun was setting, and the operators had shut down the maze for the night (they had not yet left them premises).  I get that frustration had probably gotten the better of them.

I must ask, though, how, exactly, did it become local law enforcement’s job to teach them to walk through the corn to the road and back to their car?  It was a wall of corn, not 12 inches of armor-plate.

In a broader sense, I have to ask, how, in general, we have determined that if we get into something and can’t get out, that it is someone else’s job to fix our mess?  How do start something without a back-up plan?  How do we go straight to municipal emergency services?

Why not call a family member or friend to come honk their horn in the parking lot?  Heaven help us if we actually should owe a favor back in return.  Better to just use taxpayer money.

Why not call the maze operators?  Surely they have a vested interest in the plight of the lost.  Oops, I forgot; 411 is a toll call.  No reason to invest the $1.50 of our own money.

While I have given up worrying that our GPS, MapQuest generation no longer could find north if their lives depended on it, it does seem that even the most citified, device-dependent among us, ought to be able to follow a street light.

It seems I am wrong.

Instead it seems that, even without consumption of mind-altering substances, we are becoming as impaired as the drunk surrounded by a single lamppost; the blonde stuck in a simple maze.

So…even though the topic for today is mazes, I think that, rather than “How do we get out?”, the more important question is “How did we get here?”