Remember that time on my old blog when I was getting ready to help some friends move to Oregon? and I talked about how badly I navigate? We’re back to how badly I navigate because, interestingly enough, my navigational skills have not improved in the last 24 months.
I mentioned once how I leave extra time to get to the movies in my own town. Because I take wrong turns. Getting to the movies. Which are a half mile from the grocery store. Yeah.
So, a couple of weeks ago we went to the movies and I didn’t leave extra travel time. I knew it was a mistake. The resulting anxiety did not help. I made wrong turns. We were late. All past the previews and everything, we missed the beginning of the movie. This makes Hubby frustrated. Especially because when we get lost he wants me start reading street signs out loud and I’m all, “We’re lost. I can’t waste time reading street signs. I have to figure out a way out of here.” Knowing the names of the streets I am on or near is not going to help me. They are all but meaningless, even in my own town sometimes. And reading street signs takes me away from the primary objective: looking for something familiar, large, well known, or sometimes, just plain interesting, and heading toward it. I am not particularly successful at re-routing.
This charms me. I love this about myself. I am rarely late because I build in time to get lost, or at least take the long way because I forgot which way was shorter. I feel no internal pressure to memorize routes, or streets, or which streets go north-south and which go east-west (Hubby taught me that streets do this and I was all, wow, that is totally intense).
Today Hubby and I drove to Detroit, and, as happens, we had to find a place to park. After driving for several minutes in the vague vicinity of the building we needed, we found it. Only to read that there was no public parking. The sign toward public parking pointed directly into the middle of the Fisher Theater which is what? almost a block large? I began turning corners, looking for parking. After a few minutes I found expensive parking. I parked.
Remember how I said I find my lack of directional sensitivity charming? Ok, I don’t find it charming every moment. I declared that I didn’t know where we were and I didn’t know where the building was (Read: I DARE you to figure it out). Hubby responded with due husbandly patience that we would go to the nearest street and start walking on it (where he probably would have wanted me to read street signs. Grrrrr.)
We got out of the car and I was pleasantly sprinkled to realize that we had somehow parked beside the side door of the building we needed. A gigantic building. I would have sworn we crossed a major road going the opposite direction of the building. Inside, there was a reception desk and a man walked us to what we needed. The room was so close to the car that if it were a pool, I could have swum the distance.
I felt the kindness of the universe wrap me in her loving arms. And then I got to blog, eat vegetarian lasagna, and drink diet cherry Pepsi with macadamia nut cookies. Who’s lost?
Plum Librarian LLC 