We got lost again

(In our defense, it was foggy. If the waterfront was there, it couldn't be seen.)

We got lost again. Lost in our own familiar city, no less. True, we were in a part of town we hadn't wandered much in before, but in Seattle, generally speaking, 'downhill' would lead to the waterfront and we were going downhill. Just downhill-north, instead of downhill-west, as it turned out. Oh well. We had no idea. We had been at the Seattle Center (think Space Needle complex) and wanted to go to the waterfront for lunch at one of our favorite seafood places, and we got lost. It shouldn't have been far, but we started out going the wrong way and by the time we realized we should already have been there, we were nowhere close at all.

(The main trouble with that sort of wandering is that you can end up in a seedy part of town without realizing it - as you are happily tripping along, holding hands and talking with each other. Mercifully, that wasn't the sort of trouble we had. We didn't really have 'trouble' as such at all. We just got lost. Temporarily.)

And so I am wondering again about being directionally challenged.

It's not that we don't each have our own internal compasses. We do. They just aren't well calibrated. In fact, in times of uncertainty our son has been known to ask us which direction we 'think' we should go and then stride off, in utter confidence, in the exact opposite direction. Now I don't know what Mark's excuse is, but I think I just got off on the wrong foot sometime in my early childhood by getting my internal directional markers set entirely wrong, but nevertheless set quite firmly. Realizing this, I am constantly fighting all evidence of actual direction in favor of attempting to correct perceived direction. If it hadn't been foggy, and I'd actually seen the sun settling in a westwardly direction, it's more likely that I'd have casually thought the sun was just taking a detour today than that I'd have realized I needed to change course. (OK, I'll be honest here too - I have never been convinced, in my heart of hearts, that the sun's path is consistently east to west. So it follows that 'where the sun is heading' has never managed to figure prominently in my estimations of direction. This is similar to the well-known psychological phenomenon about not truly believing that there is a connection between what one eats and how much one weighs. Intellectually? Certainly. Actionably? Not so much.)

I am not helped in this deficiency by general geography either. Streets shouldn't change direction. They should march purposefully forth in a straight line, the promise of delivering you exactly where you thought you'd get delivered, fulfilled. None of this curving around business and becoming something else. They shouldn't end by fading out into an alleyway or railroad track either. And the buildings surrounding them shouldn't be allowed to block all views of possible landmarks. That just makes sense...

Particularly to someone who is hungry and just a little footsore and feeling foolish for getting lost in her own town.