I have watched the television show "Lost" once or twice, not because it is the best program on the air but because I have to occasionally remind myself to get very specific directions when I am headed into unfamiliar territory, and above all to remember how to get back to where I began.
The actors on the TV show are young, sexy and hip to the ways of survival. When they aren't fighting or groping each other, they're turning bark into pork chops and sand fleas into penicillin. I am not so innovative, which is one of the reasons when lost that I end up in a state of panic. And I get lost a lot.
A case in point is a recent attempt to maneuver down from Mt. Washington in the dark on winding roads that changed names or that ended abruptly against a hillside. I had only a vague notion in the first place of where I was going and no one else seemed to know either.
I was there to join in honoring Jack Smith, the late Times' columnist who once lived in the tight little cultural biome overlooking . . . well, I don't actually know what it was overlooking because I don't know exactly where I was.
Smith died in 1996 and this was the 50th anniversary of the start of his column. He had been much beloved by everyone, including me, although I think admired or respected might be a better term to describe the connection between two ex-Marines. We aren't usually beloved to each other.
Directions provided by Eliot Sekuler, president of the Mt. Washington Assn., got me to the meeting site, whereupon I gave a short, messed-up speech, but only after a much longer presentation by a lady who was showing slides and talking about improving life in L.A. I think she was from the city attorney's office, which has very little to do with improving anything.
Sekuler had to catch a plane, so he was gone by the time I stood up to speak, which was fortunate for him, and he was not there to guide me down from the mountain, which was not fortunate for me. I left the meeting place about 9 p.m. and was still wandering around the narrow streets of the remote community at 10:30. Three times I asked someone how to get out of there. Two people gave me wrong information and the third said she didn't know and rushed into her house.
Standing in the middle of the street with the moon looking down on me I felt like the woman who was wandering in front of our Topanga home one night shouting to no one in particular in a voice of desperation, "Will somebody help me? Please, help me!"
