I have absolutely no sense of direction. I can get lost in my own neighborhood. Tell me I can’t miss something? I take that as a personal challenge. Yes, I can. Truly, I can.
When I was growing up, this lack of awareness really didn’t matter that much. I was little, and my feet wouldn’t reach the pedals, so the big people in my life drove me around. There was one awkward time when one of the teenagers from church gave me a ride home from youth group. We found my house. Eventually.
I’m usually a very prompt person. I arrive early to meetings, right on time to social events. But I used to have to leave early whenever I had to be somewhere to allow time for me to get lost and regain my bearings. I actually missed a nice dinner meeting once because there was construction and I missed my exit in an area where several freeways intersected. No recovering from that one until the meeting was long over. I use landmarks to find things and if construction or new builds change the landscape, I’m toast.
My mother was always up for an adventure when we were running errands. She would impulsively zig instead of zag, saying, “Let’s see where this road leads, “or “We’ve never gone this way.” If we were traveling and we saw something interesting, we’d stop to investigate. It’s a running joke in our family that everything is “on the way” even if we have to go way outside the quickest route to get to it. I mean, we stop on the way home, right? Therefore, it's on the way.
One of my dearest friends is as hapless at finding her way as I am.
I think the person who made GPS available to the general public deserves a Nobel Prize. As long as I have my phone, I can get there. Yes, there have been a few odd exceptions where the GPS is as confused as I, but most of the time it’s a life saver. I know when I have to leave the house and how I’m going to get there.
That’s not to say that I still don’t take a few detours to explore. Life should not always be straight from point A to point B when there are so many fascinating unknowns in the world. Remember what J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, “Not all who wander are lost.”
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I loved this. I like to take detours occasionally to see what I might be missing.
ReplyDeleteMe, too. So many interesting places to go and things to see.
DeleteI enjoyed this--and identified with it! GPS is the best thing since...well, the last best thing. My affinity for "let's go this way" drives my always-the-same-route husband crazy.
ReplyDeleteI got a chuckle out of this post. I've learned to navigate via landmarks or I use GPS. My husband does his crazy navigating with such phrases as "go north, go east, go southwest from here, etc.," like I can find my (exact) way via the direction of the sun. Yeah, right. It's somewhere in the sky and is shining, thank you, dear. Great post! Still laughing.
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