How I give directions:
“Type in maps.yahoo.com.”
How I used to give directions:
“Turn right on Elm street.
Drive 3 miles.
Turn left on Perry, then an immediate right on St. Antoine. It’s the second house on the right.”
How my in-laws STILL give directions:
“Pretend you’re going to the library, the one by the A&W*.
Turn right, then, drive until you see a Hucks**. The street after the Hucks is the one you want, so you turn left there.
After you see a bush with yellow flowers*** there’s a street on the right.
No. Left. Wilma! Is it a right or a left? Well, we think its a right. If you go left and you can’t find it then you’re going the wrong way.
It’s the house on the right with a porcupine bootscraper on the porch.”
*The A&W closed twenty years ago.
**Hucks is to rural Missouri what Starbucks is to Seattle. Honestly, you pass three Hucks after the library.
***This is a forsythia bush. This bush flowers two weeks out of the year.
7 responses to “Get Me There”
Ah, yes… I think I know your in-laws. 🙂
I used to totally give landmark directions. I have always been somewhat directionally impaired, but it was so bad at one point that I really didn’t know the names of the streets in the town I lived in. Now? I just try to avoid highways. Seriously. There is no faster way to get me lost than to put me on a highway.
Directions to her home given by SIL:”Turn left where the barn used to be.*Turn left at the next intersection, and go halfway down that road.**We’re the brown house*** on the left.”*The barn was torn down years before I arrived in this area.**It’s a very long rural dead-end road. How far is halfway?***There are four brown houses in a row.You can’t even go by the house number because it’s rural delivery, and the mailboxes are in groups of ten along the road.Thank God for enhanced 911. Now all streets have names, and all houses have numbers, and SIL can’t hide any more.
Sue – My heart stopped a little whe I read that. Then I realized you were speaking figuratively.Bianca – (Hi Bianca! May I call you Bianca?) I strongly recommend a GPS system. You don’t have to have any sense of direction. You can drive through highways in remote cities with confidence.Silk – Can SIL follow directions if they are given with street names and numbers? That confuses the in-laws. Or did you have to translate everything into landmarks to get her to your house?
Ummm. OK. “Hello, my name is KC and I’m a landmark direction giver.” It’s embarrassing, but true. I’ve lived in this city all my life but STILL can’t remember the names of streets I turn on every day. However, I do know to tell someone to “turn right at the Quik Trip, go a block and then make a left at the curvy part of the road. Drive past the bus station and then you’ll see the glass fronted white building on the right. Park anywhere except by the rose bushes.” Then the person I’m giving directions to turns to my husband and he’ll actually draw a map for them with street names, landmarks, etc. Damn him.
I didn’t realize what a landmark follower I was until a few years ago. There are multiple ways into the neighborhood where my dad has lived since 1987. I always turned by the pink house. Until once in the late 90s when I realized I’d drive too far down the main road and turned around. The pink house is now white. But to me, it will forever be known as the pink house.
KC – (entire crowd) “Hi, KC!”KC and Caroline – stop it with the landmark directions! My inlaws tried to find my house after not having visited in 10 years (there are some things I love about them) and because the Wal-Mart moved it took them five hours.