Getting Lost

I went to AAA yesterday to get my new Washington membership, and the very kind person there loaded me up on area maps – seemingly dozens of them. “We don’t want you getting lost out there” she said. If only she knew.

We actually HAVE been lost, in the course of the last few weeks, in about 5 of the areas she gave us maps for. But I suspect the maps wouldn’t have helped really. We are directionally challenged. It doesn’t help that, this far north in the winter, the sun rises and sets in the south. It probably doesn’t hurt either though – we aren’t really paying attention to that sort of thing when we are lost. We generally focus on closer landscape features – street signs, for example – and then don’t know what they tell us about the actual direction we are going. This is why Todd hates to walk in the city with us – he strides purposefully forth in greatest confidence while we are huddled on a street corner gesturing at distances and peering at our map, then turning the map upside down and trying again… He’d rather not be associated. It has gotten so bad that Todd and Mark generally ask me which direction I think we should go and then head off in the opposite one. Oh well. I try.

Yesterday, after actually finding my way to the AAA office, I decided to see if I could find the ‘bigger, newer, better” Freddy’s store in Redmond. Big mistake. Huge. It seemed like I kept choosing the lanes that turned into ‘right turn only’ and then had to turn and got, well, turned around, and then the street I was forced to turn on would take a bunch of turns itself and pretty soon it was hopeless. I did come upon the Freddy’s – and it was great – but then couldn’t find my way back. I hate ‘turns.’

I blame my youth in Tucson. Tucson is laid out in a grid – straight parallel and perpendicular lines all going east/west or north/south and all aligned with the mountains. You always know which direction you are going. Unfortunately, such ease didn’t foster any innate directional indicators in me – and this is the result. Clueless.

Today I am studying maps for the next great adventure – which will turn out to be great in spite of the fact that we will surely be getting lost.