I have a flaw. I KNOW. And here you thought I was perfect, right? It is a small, relatively minor flaw. That causes me to never, ever know where I am in relation to anything else.
I am totally, completely, scarily without any sense of direction. And not "direction" in the life or career sense (but yes, that too), but "direction" in the sense that I cannot tell you where north is unless I have a compass. And someone else to read the compass for me.
I know this is not a particularly unique problem among females--something to do with the left-brain predominance or something science-y and smarty like that. All I know is that if you give me a choice to turn left or right to get to my destination, I will ALWAYS turn the wrong way.
Like on Sunday, when I dropped A. off at his boss's house so they could drive to the airport for a trip to D.C. They left as soon as I dropped him off. They turned right out of the driveway, and I turned left and started to re-trace my route to get out of this circuitous, inter-connected, really confusing neighborhood the guy lives in. I had my directions on a sheet of paper. I looked at them to make sure I could just make opposite turns to backtrack . . . and turned the wrong way at the very first street. AND THEN, while driving about aimlessly, trying to find my way out, I passed A. and his boss, going out of the neighborhood.
Well, hello, A.'s boss! Please meet A.'s completely moronic nitwit of a wife!
Road trips are always a tense affair in our car. A. always wants to drive. And he always wants me to navigate. Despite 6 years of conversations that go like this:
"Do you see where we are?"
"Hang on . . ."
"We just passed a sign for X. Do you see X on the map?"
"Wait a second . . ."
"You're not even on the right page!"
"I can't find it with you yelling at me!"
"JESUS CHRIST, GIVE ME THE MAP. Take the wheel. We're right here."
Ten minutes later, repeat. Because it was so fun the first time. We're either slow learners, or masochists.
I really, really wish I could read a map. I can't just blame those two X chromosomes, though, because my sister can. The MiL can. But my mother is just as bad as me. It's truly frightening to think that the two of us drove cross-country once using only the AAA Triptiks, and had we gotten off course from those directions even once, we probably would have ended up in Alaska.
It's not just me, though. Right? Some of you MUST have horror stories of driving in circles or seeing a sign and realizing you're 50 miles off course. RIGHT?
Heh...I have to say that my sister & I both have eerily accurate senses of direction (so does my Dad). Uh, except for that one time I tried to bypass a crowded highway and took backroads...which landed me in an area somewhere between East L.A. and Beirut. Tears and much freaking out ensued.
ReplyDeleteI once stopped by a friend's house in White Plains on my way up the coast. Her son called while I was there and she said "Hey, guess who's visiting? I'll give you a hint: she got lost on the way here." He got it the first guess.
ReplyDeleteI have a decent sense of direction. But I do have a huge fear of getting lost, though. My mom recently bought a GPS, which I borrowed and decided was the best thing ever.
ReplyDeleteI have a decent basic sense of direction (I can usually tell if I'm heading north, south, east, or west) but I think EVERYONE gets messed up in those god-awful clusterfuck developments that some dumbass builder or community planner decided on about 15 years ago. For thousands of years, cities got along just great using the "straight streets laid out in a grid" design. How do they think having one main arterial street and a bunch of wildly curving, feed-back-onto-themselves streets with such damn foo-foo sounding names is an improvement?
ReplyDeleteGuess I missed the "rant" day over on Evil Chef Mom by a few days, so apparently I felt compelled to take it out on poor little Going-Country. Sorry.
I have a pretty good sense of direction, but only if I have my mountains around. Take me out of Salt Lake valley and I have no idea. I just have to make sure to mapquest the hell out of any place I've never been before.
ReplyDeleteSorry, dear. I'm with Jive Turkey on the eerily accurate sense of direction. Even without a map, if I know what direction I'm supposed to go in I can usually get there just fine. I only have problems if I'm in an area I've never been before and flew there. Being dropped in the center of a new city is confusing, but once I get my bearings I'm good. I'm sure you'll get better?
ReplyDeleteAlso, my Spam word is "angsta" - is that like a really uptight gangsta?
I have a great sense of direction. Honed as a Marine too! :)
ReplyDeleteBut I did once get lost on my way from Michigan to Oregon. I was supposed to turn right in Indiana, but missed my turn and didn't find out til I was in Missouri.
i had a good sense of direction until i had children. then my brain went haywire. my husband and i have these arguements all the time but i think spending some money on a tom tom or some other type of gps would greatly contribute to harmony of our marriage.
ReplyDeleteDon't feel bad, who in the world can find their way around those mega housing developements where all the house look the same? That is why I live in the country...turn left at the big red barn, go one hundred fence posts then right over the creek down the pasure road, left at the camel and you're there. Now those are direction I can follow!
ReplyDeleteYou're right - it's not in the genes 'cause I am usually really good. But, Mom and I once missed THE ENTIRE TOWN of Ft Collins CO (with 3 exits) and suddenly found ourselves in Wyoming wondering what had happened....
ReplyDeleteI once got lost going home to visit the folks while in college. For some reason i went south then realized i'm supposed to be going north then got lost in the neighborhood my parents lived in. Just got my first GPS and yay haven't gotten lost yet!!!
ReplyDeleteSo Kristin, is a GPS or a Tom Tom on your christmas wish list? *grin*
There are so many things I can't do worth jack sh$t, like all forms of math, but navigate is weirdly not one of them. I'm freaking Christopher Columbus. (Wait -- he lost his way and "discovered" America by accident. Not a good example.) I'm Marco Polo! I moved to Boston after college, bought a map, and became famous among my friends for figuring out the best routes to get anywhere in the shortest time. And if you've ever been to Boston, you know it's a crazy place to get around in -- circular roads and roads that change names abruptly. Anyway, it feels weird to brag about this because I'm a total retard in every other way, but I truly have a mini-GPS in my head and I always know which way I'm going.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to brag or anything...ok, I always want to brag, but that aside...I have a pretty good sense of direction and am the Certified Navigator of All Household Trips to Elsewhere. I can man the Blackberry satellite map or the car navigation or the plain paper map or that shitty ripped post-it note scribbled with my beloved's sparse directions without fail.
ReplyDeleteWhat I can't do is retrace my steps home. No. Not ever. Must have reverse directions. Don't know why.