This weekend is the very first time someone is coming to visit me in L.A., and I’m nervous.

At the moment my primary nervousness surrounds the fact that I’ve never picked someone up at LAX, and I’m worried I’m going to somehow do it wrong and leave my guest stranded or confused or, worse than that, under the assumption that I’m really bad at living in L.A. It is my perception that knowing how to pick someone up at LAX is one of the cornerstones of knowing how to live in L.A.

• “You know to wait at the In-N-Out for the person you’re picking up to call so you don’t have to loop, right?” Robby said.
• “You know what to tell the cops if they tell you to get out of the arrival pick-up lane to get them off your back, right?” Ann said.
• “You’re going to take La Cienega all the way to La Tijera, right?” said someone I really didn’t mean to slap in face…

No! No I don’t know about In-N-Out and police evasion and the fastest route to the airport. I’ve only ever arrived via car service or people other than me driving, and at this point it’s too late for me to commit these tricks to to memory meaning I’m sure to mess it up and then when someone back home asks my visitor, “how is Jessie doing in L.A.??” they’ll say, “It’s a disaster. She doesn’t know how to do it.”

The simple solution, of course, would be to use the GPS that I keep in the glove compartment of my car for use in instances when I’m 100% sure I will get lost without the device and don’t have time to be lost in that given moment.

I’ve set those very specific parameters because I don’t want to grow reliant on the GPS like I hear people who just move to L.A. can get, and then two years from now (yes, or less if I move home sooner, Mom) I still won’t be able to get from my house to the part of town where all the karaoke bars are. And if there’s anything I’m not willing to risk it’s my knowledge of how to get to the part of town where all the karaoke bars are.

I’ve established the one “unless” knowing there are those very specific moments where you know you will get lost and don’t have time to figure out where you are by looking for the Hollywood Hills and/or trying to use gas station prices as neighborhood indicators. This has happened twice. Once en route to a party in the Hollywood Hills (which I was able to find by virtue of they go up, but couldn’t navigate once I got in them) and once en route from my office to a business meeting at another office. If there’s two things you can’t mess with it’s proper arrival time to both parties and business meetings.

In this particular case of picking my guest up at the airport I have both ample time to get lost and a very serious pride issue going on, so there’s no way I can use the GPS. Instead I’ve been forced to create a mnemonic device for the directions both going to and leaving the airport. The recommended route there given my starting location is La Cienega to La Tijera to Airport Way to Culver Blvd is LLAC – so – Ladies Love Avocado Cubes and going home is Follow Signs to the 405 to take ramp to 405 North to actually exit onto La Cienega – which is trickier, so I just set those words to King of New York from Newsies, which works surprising well if you ever come across a tough mnemonic situation.

Luckily the whole there-are-no-tolls-here situation means I don’t have to deal with the wild card of pulling up to a toll booth close enough to reach the ticket and/or press the button without putting the car in park, unbuckling my seat belt, opening the door, and reaching out akin to some idiot whose never pulled up to a toll situation before. That is as clear a sign as any that you don’t know how to live in L.A. and you do it in a forum that’s totally inviting people to snap a camera phone shot of your lameness and upload it directly to Facebook. Caption: L.A. Fail.

So, it should all be very simple. Drive there without getting lost, pulled over, or in an accident. Navigate pick-up and drop-off lanes to secure visitor. Remember how to pop trunk to put luggage into trunk of car. Exit airport and mentally reverse directions just driven to get back to house while seeming in complete control of both the vehicle and life at large.

Aanndddd then repeat over four days playing tour guide…

Wish me luck, and easy-to-pull-into parking spots.