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Gray Matter
A Wrong Turn—for The Right Reasons
Some stories are so deserving of only your best effort that you approach them with apprehension. You’re aware that, quite possibly, you cannot tell them well enough.
This uncommon narrative belongs in that select category. It begins in Wisconsin, in the small-town of River Falls. Here, Wayne Wolfe, 87 years old and a retired vice chancellor of the University of Wisconsin (at River Falls), sets off to see a granddaughter perform in her second grade production. His destination: Woodbury, in neighboring Minnesota.
The 25-mile drive goes as planned. At the Woodbury elementary school, however, Wayne has difficulty finding the correct entrance. He approaches a locked rear door, loses time, and then is too late to see the play. Still, he visits with young Alexis, his granddaughter.
Just before 3 p.m., Grandpa Wayne, once a world traveler with driving time in Mexico, Germany, England, Australia and Jamaica, leaves for home. He is driving his much-loved Toyota Echo and, quite possibly, softly reciting favorite Shakespeare works. Wayne is not above quoting the Bard, when it seems appropriate.
Approaching the ramp leading onto Interstate Highway 94, Wayne Wolfe mistakenly turns west, away from Wisconsin. He is bound, instead, for St. Paul and Minneapolis, meaning heavy traffic—and, sadly, he is lost.
He drives on. Unknowingly, he now is in the beginning stages of a misadventure. Consider, over the next 20 hours Wayne Wolfe will drive some 650 miles, much of it in the wrong direction. He stops periodically, for information. Several times he telephones home.
To wife Marian, he reports: “I made a wrong turn. I’m in St. Cloud. I know where I am. I’ll see you in a little while.” It is six p.m., and Wrong Way Wayne is late by some two hours.
Now, please take out your family atlas: turn to Minnesota and neighboring Wisconsin. In this way, you can recognize how our confused traveler drove through St. Paul, then Minneapolis, and continuing north—away from Wisconsin—reached St. Cloud.
“I’m fine,” the onetime academician said. He plainly was not fine. He was increasingly frustrated, and seething over his mistakes. Now, once more, he makes a wrong turn, and again heads due north.
Two hours later, with darkness settling over the Midwestern states, wife Marian telephones son Warren, a reporter with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. He immediately alerts state police that Wayne Wolfe is, well, “Missing.”
Meanwhile, the Toyota wanders, from St. Cloud north to far-off Bemidji, then back down the state to Monticello, arriving at 2:30 in the morning. Again, he phones home, repeating: “I have good directions …Yes, I’m fine.”
He drives on, this time to Hinckley, still in Minnesota. It’s now six in the morning of the following day. Next, Wayne Wolfe heads toward the center of his home state, reaching Blaine,
Minnesota, at 11:30 a.m. He is still well-dressed in suit, shirt and proper tie.
Here, an alert and kindly clerk at the gas station, Linda Green, sits Wayne down, calls him “Honey,” and serves him orange juice and a muffin. She then telephones his home. Son Warren directs Linda Green to “Keep him there, please. We’re on our way.”
When Marian Wolfe finally takes the wheel for the long drive home, a now relieved Wayne Wolfe admits that, “I thought I’d never see you again.”
In the days that follow the family learns, from doctors, that Wayne Wolfe’s problem, leading to his inexplicable confusion, was not Alzheimer’s disease. Rather, it was little-known Transient Global Amnesia, TGA, which is responsible for some 10 or fewer cases per 100,000 persons a year. Oftentimes, it lasts only an hour. In summary, the TGA sufferer simply cannot process new information.
With his father’s full cooperation, newsman Warren last October wrote the story for his newspaper. Readers loved it, e-mailing and telephoning to say, “You go, Dad.” The celebrity grandpa even took a drive with a local television crew, demonstrating that he surely knew his way home, most days.
“Stress,” said Warren Wolfe. “Stress probably brought on TGA. You know, Dad didn’t want to miss Alexis’s play.”
Now, that, surely is a tale about an ever-loving Grandpa!
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Outrageous Associations
