Lost. As Usual.

My sense of direction = a dying moose on crack. Which translated means: I wander around wondering what the hell is going on and how in the WORLD did I end up here. And this is in my own city/town/neighborhood. I've been this way for as long as I can remember.

And yet my parents insist on me NOT using a GPS. I have to learn how to find my way in COMPLETELY unfamiliar territory armed with only a set of MapQuest directions and my own brain. Needless to say, every single time, I get lost. Eventually I find my way home, but by that point I have tears and snot dripping down my face because I just KNOW that my car is going to break down and then I'll be eaten/raped/killed (in that order) by some psychopath in the woods. Even if there aren't woods nearby.

It's not like I'm asking for much. All I need is a GPS, so that when I get lost I can find an alternate route instead of trying to turn around and drive 5 bajillion miles trying to find my way back onto the road I'm supposed to be on. I wouldn't even use it that much, just when I'm trying to go somewhere that I've only been once. But no. Apparently I'm supposed to go to a place once, and just KNOW how to get there from then on out. Not possible. It took me a year to learn how to walk around my neighborhood.

That's true, too. It took me a YEAR. Granted, I was four and didn't know how to get my way out of a cardboard box, but STILL. I'd start walking around the block, decide it was taking too long so I must be lost, and then I'd sit down on the sidewalk and cry. Hours later my mother would drive up, with a "WTF is wrong with my child?" look on her face. Then we'd go home, and I'd forget it ever happened. Until the next time. And the next. And the next.

Once, I got a guy lost going to my house. I had babysat for him, and as he was about to drive me home, his wife said, "Here, take these directions." His response was, "No thanks, we'll be fine, Hattie knows the way."

I was far too nervous to tell him that I, in fact, did NOT know the way. If I did that, he might not pay me. Or worse, he'd laugh at me and let me get eaten/raped/killed by a psychopath in the woods. So I just bit my lip and nodded.

We headed out, and he knew the general direction to my house. We got to a road that I SHOULD have been able to get us home from. Alas, I couldn't. I ended up taking him to the middle school, because I thought I could find my way home from there. And I could. If I walked. So then we drove past the Portsmouth YMCA, which was the opposite direction of where we wanted to go.

Eventually we ended up in my neighborhood. Except that it was 11 at night by then, and I hadn't been in this part before, and I had no clue it was part of my neighborhood. So we called home. Imagine my mother's surprise at finding out just how mentally handicapped her daughter is when it comes to directions. You would have thought she'd have known after the going-around-the-block-or-lack-thereof fiasco.

I got home, though, and ever since I've not been allowed to live it down. Personally, I'm just hoping to become rich enough to have a chauffeur, that way I don't have to know the way, or even drive. Or at least I could use a husband with a great sense of direction and a love of driving me anywhere I want to go.