Where?

I live in a small-ish town. We are on the verge of getting our fifth fully functioning traffic light in the near future. We have one grocery store, which we have only had for the last year and is the reason for the addition of a traffic light. We have one fast food restaurant. Everyone knows everyone. When our census was last done in 2000 we had less than 7,000 residents. I know this has grown quite a bit since then due to the addition of a gated senior city community for which our county is notorious for, but it's like they are in their own little world in there. Our police force consists of approximately twenty officers or so. You get the idea, small town.

Anyhow we got our full access parkway exchange just two year back. It is so new in fact it is not even shown on my GPS despite my many updates to it. We can now get on and off northbound or southbound of the parkway, one of our state's major arteries. The parkway is nearly 175 miles long, mostly north and south. Pretty impressive since NJ is about 150 miles tip to tail. The parkway for those unfamiliar is tagged all along with mile markers, every 1/10th of a mile showing your exact location. Most exits are based on their mile markers position. It is very acceptable and usual when meeting someone from an area you are not familiar with to ask "what exit is that?" Everyone knows exit off of what, because despite the fact we have other highways, the parkway is "the" highway. My small town's exit is 69. Yes, haha, I have heard all the jokes. We even have a bumper sticker common to our area, Exit 69, where everyone gets off.

Before the whole exit 69 claim to fame hardly anyone knew of our town, not even people living a mere 20 minutes north of us. The joke about telling someone you lived in Waretown, was where? Waretown. Where? Haha. It gets funny after like the 2nd time, and people think they are so unique when doing this, little do they know, us living here have heard it dozens and dozens of times.

The other day while driving on the parkway though I noticed something odd. Our actual exit is not located anywhere in the 69 mile marker zone. Nope it is in the 70 mile marker zone. I am thinking some brilliant person from the highway authority who has authority of naming the exits thought he had an awesome sense of humor when naming us exit 69. Heck, maybe he is even the one who trademarked those bumper stickers. I betcha though, he does not live here, he doesn't have to tell people I get off on 69. Thank you Mr. (or Mrs.) Naming the Exit Idiot for making our sweet little town the laughing stock of the Garden State.