Milwaukee to Chicago

Me: What do we need to take to get to Chicago?
Hubby: 43S to 94W to 394S
Me: OK.
Hubby: Where are we now?
Me: 94 is coming up
Hubby: Great, get on going West
Me: OK

Ten minutes later

Hubby (who knows me so well): Where are we?
Me: I hate the roads here. They tell you what the exits are but they don’t tell you what road you are currently on
Hubby: Dead silence

Three minutes later

Me: We’re on 94 West
Hubby: How is that possible?
Me: I don’t know. I got on 94 East
Hubby: Uh-huh

Me: 41 is coming up. Can we take 41 to get to 94 East?
Hubby: 41 goes North from here. We’re going to Chicago.

I draw a mental map of the United States, something I do frequently when terms like “North, South, East, and West” are mentioned in relation to where I should go. I zero in on the Great Lakes region. I locate Milwaukee. I locate Chicago. I realize that going north will not get us to Chicago.

Me: I’ll turn around on 94 and go East
Hubby: OK

We get of, turn around, proceed on 94 East

Me: What’s the next thing we need to do?
Hubby: Get off onto 394. it won’t be for over an hour and we have to go through the tolls first.

I see a sign for 294.

Me: What about 294?
Hubby: We need 394.

A half hour later I see signs for 80/90 – Indiana and Iowa.

Me: Do we want 80/90?
Hubby: No, we want 394.

These signs are like sirens, calling to me. I do want to get to Chicago. I have every intention of arriving in Chicago. I have no desire to go to Indiana or Iowa at the present time. Yet the signs! They call to me. It is hard to pass them by, as if by driving under them I shall be sprinkled with pixie dust and all shall be right with the world. I feel a sense of something left undone, something missed, when I do not follow these roads.

Ten minutes later.

Hubby: It is a complete mystery to me how you actually arrive anywhere.
Me: Hubby? Me, too.

I giggle. I am delighted by my lack of directional sense. I think it charming and utterly marvelous. Incongruous with my normally rigid and goal-oriented lifestyle, it is absolutely fine with me that I can’t get from one end of town to the other.

Me: Isn’t it amazing that I once helped navigate a caravan to the West Coast before the days of GPS?
Hubby: Yes. Yes, it is.