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Lost and Found

I am nothing if not geographically challenged.  I was never more happy than when my phone started talking to me, giving me directions…even to places I’ve been to thousands times before. Between my MapQuest printout and my phone’s backseat driver, it’s slightly more difficult for me to get lost these days, and for that, I’m grateful.

As for giving directions to others, my narrative often includes landmarks only locals would know since they closed down years ago – “you know, turn by where the Dunkin Donuts used to be, I don’t know what’s there now, but it used to be a Dunkin Donuts…big, red brick building with a drive-thru” and statements like “go down the third street, I can’t remember the name, but it’s like the third street, at least I think it’s the third street, you’ll see a white house with blue shutters and it’s on the corner from a blue house with white shutters…if you hit the gas station, you’ve gone too far.”

Yeah, I feel for those dumb trusting enough to ask me how to get somewhere. Poor, lost souls.

 

20 thoughts on “Lost and Found”

  2. I’m the opposite. Take me somewhere once and 5 years later I can make the trek in reverse. I argued with my friend’s GPS, proved it wrong and on my own got us out of tbe mess of wrong direction it had created, and across town to where we wanted to be. Down side is if I want to just go get lost in the countryside for a day, I’m unable to turn of the inner compass.

  3. My friend and I went to Geneva yesterday. Here’s how we got there. We went to the end of a street, turned left, then drove to where the apartments were and turned right, then drove to where the chain link fence was and turned left, then went to the Shell Gas station and turned right. LOLOLOL Know exactly what you mean.

  4. I live in Manhattan partly because it’s laid out like a grild—crosstown- 6th ave, 7th ave, etc. The streets are numbered consecutively so I know where I am. I cannot go to Greennwich Village on my own because I have been known to cry when I get to the corner of 4th St and 10th St. That’s just mean when a person is geographically challenged.

    • Oh no! It sounds like they threw that in as a dirty trick, just to confuse people. John Mulaney (a pretty funny comedian) did a bit on the streets in NYC and how it’s impossible to get lost because of the grid-like layout. I tell you what though, if anyone could do it, it would be me.

  5. You would fit right in giving directions in Vermont! “Aye-yahht, lesse see, you want to go thisa way about two mile, you’ll see a bahnn. Not the red one with the black roof, but the less reddish one with more of a grey roof. Once you see that, slow down cause you’re going to get to the rivah. If you get TO the rivah you’ve gone too far, so before that turn right onto the green arc bridge OVAAA the rivah. Go for a spell till you see some cows… Oh, what’s that Maahthah? Oh, right, that bridge is out, big ice dam in ’96 wiped it right away. So, I guess you cain’t get theeha from heeah.”

  7. I’m the same too! Street names? Don’t know them, but I can tell you the shops and buildings down them! But then once I’ve been somewhere once it’s normally engrained in me how to get there again even years later. Or I can look at map, get a general idea where it is without having to look at it again. That’s not to say I don’t get ‘lost’ every now and then!

    • I can go to the same place over and over and still almost get lost. I don’t know if it’s my anxiety and the fact that I question myself or what, but even going somewhere familiar I’m usually like “Is this the road I want!?”

      • Ha Ha! Don’t doubt yourself! Take the road see where it leads you! But obviously listen to your intuition. If it says not this road today bad feeling, don’t go down it.

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