I just visited my hometown, and while I was there, I got lost. It’s not like anything’s changed, no major construction or anything. One time, I got lost between my house and the neighborhood playground. I was twelve, and my six–year–old sister knew the way. She’s good at directions, but I don’t think she needed to be, because it was a sixty–second walk. You could literally see the place I started from the place I ended.
That was my first commute—the sixty-second walk or thirty-second run from my house to the POA pool behind it. And I think the reason that I’ve never accepted a job with a commute more than ten or fifteen minutes from my house is because I know I’d get lost. When I get lost, a thirty-minute drive turns into an hour and a half. That would happen every. Single. Morning. And I would get fired, because they’d think I slept in and lied about it. And that I was stupid, because I used the exact same excuse every single day.
My problem is that I use Google Maps, but I don’t trust it. It says turn right and I go straight. I don’t trust it because it’s silent for long periods of time. I’m like, “Are we still on speaking terms?”
My sister was in the car with me recently (she’s thirteen now) and when I ignored the directions, she groaned. I think I’ve traumatized her. Because, you know, from someone who gets lost so often, you’d expect me to be calm when it happens, right? I’m not. I’m a hectic mess, taking left turns out of nowhere and switching lanes to avoid tailgaters (i.e. anyone who knows where they’re going and drives faster than twenty-five miles per hour).
My struggle with directions translates to other stuff. For example: Bible references. If someone held a gun to my head and asked me where John 3:16 is in the Bible, I probably couldn’t tell them. It also translates to relationships. I don’t have the herd instinct. If my life was a wildlife documentary, I’d be the one little zebra who gets cut off from the group and wanders around alone. The narrator would say, “This little zebra doesn’t have an internal compass like the other zebras—she’s separated from the herd.” with horror movie music in the background until a lion found me and ate my guts on camera.
But seriously—the herd instinct matters. When people started gathering on the steps outside after dance class, I’d take note that it was the place to hang out and go there the next day. But they were always in a new place when I got there. I used to think people were just avoiding me, but then I had friends who actually liked me and it still happened. It’s a curiosity to me—I’ll be sitting on one floor of the small Victorian house where our office is, and one by one everyone goes downstairs within five minutes of each other. Then they show up again in the same place. I tried following them, but even in a three–story building, you need an internal compass to keep up with the herd.
The same way I don’t trust Google Maps if it’s been silent for too long, I don’t trust other people if they’re silent for too long. I get real jumpy in an elevator. But seriously, if I’m not getting any feedback from a person, I think they must be mad at me. This causes a lot of misunderstandings.
And when you think about it, a misunderstanding translates to how good you are at directions, too. A misunderstanding is like a wrong turn. If someone said to me, “I don’t think our relationship is working out. I don’t think we communicate very well and you said this thing that hurt me and I did this thing that hurt you and I don’t think we should keep trying to make this work.” I would respond with, “I’m lost, can we reroute?”
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