Let me guess … the Pacific is east of here
by Kate Zimmerman for the North Shore News
I was disturbed to discover this week that I am actually a man.
You’d think I would have noticed before now. Other people may have suspected it, what with the unseemly height, the low voice, the fondness for swearing and the clear inability to crochet. I guess I always just assumed that I was female because I liked to read The Girls’ Own Annual. And nobody bothered to disabuse me of the notion, least of all my husband, Stanley — which suggests that he is, at the very least, confused.
Back to my point. It finally became obvious to me on Tuesday that I have the one determining factor that all comedians (the social scientists of our generation) believe separate the guys from the gals. This has nothing to do with chromosomes or “packages.” What divides the lads from the ladies, as everybody knows, is that men are incapable of asking for directions.
This, too, is my problem. I can’t explain why it is so inconceivable for me to consult a map or call up someone who is already at my destination and get concise leadership — it just is. I can bump along a country road for ages before realizing that the reason this stretch of asphalt keeps prompting deja vu is that I have now seen it 17 times in the space of 90 minutes.
Before now, though, I have never officially admitted to this character flaw. When my friends ask why I got lost driving to their house, which I have visited at least 75 times before, I try to look startled by the question. “I’m sorry. I guess I was distracted by man’s inhumanity to man,” I say, wiping away a tear and scuttling over to the artichoke dip.
My patient mother has suffered through several well-intentioned trips with me. One time I said “Let’s drive down the Oregon Coast all the way to San Francisco.” Did I bother looking at a map, and trying to figure out a) the route and b) how long such a journey might take? No. Instead, I set off with my mother in the passenger seat and a vague sense that driving south might be sensible. On one particular evening on this trip I turned left instead of right when we left the restaurant after dinner and wound up driving about four hours the way we had come.
We never got anywhere near California, what with retracing our tire tracks daily. Actually, it’s a miracle that we didn’t wind up in Alaska. I have a funny feeling that the only reason my mother did not shoot me dead was that she didn’t have a gun.
Neither do my children, thankfully. They are more than used to climbing into the car while I dangle the promise of an outing that sounds exciting. I co-wrote a book in Calgary about things to do for kids, which required me to drive them here, there and everywhere in search of museums, paddle-boat ponds, bead-stringing emporiums and so on. Most of these ostensibly wholesome, family-friendly jaunts ended with me screaming in frustration at not being able to find the place, while they cowered miserably in the back seat. The worst aspect of this story is that part of my assignment as author was to provide directions to these landmarks for others. I hate to think of all the mothers with hysterical, smelly-diapered toddlers who are still trying to obey my ludicrous directions.
But do you think when writing this book I would call the operators of these public institutions and ask them the easiest way to get there? Hardly. What do you think I am — a woman?
I take some small comfort in knowing that I am not alone in my directional disability. On Tuesday I arrived 40 minutes late for a one-hour-long wine-tasting date with a friend because I had done no research whatsoever on how to get to Dubrulle Culinary Institute. Stanley said “I think it’s underneath the bridge at Granville Island,” so rather than pick up the phone and confirm this, I charged off, parked on the island, and discovered that I was at a different cooking school altogether. Did I call anyone at Dubrulle, to at least narrow the margin of error? No. I returned to my vehicle and charged off again, this time in a southerly direction. I did eventually get where I wanted to go (er, north), but it was only by fluke.
Apologies were of course in order, and my friend kindly noted that she had the same problem. Her sense of direction was so faulty, she said, that she has taken to carrying a compass at work. Now, when somebody in her office building tells her they need her in the southwest corner of the third floor, she furtively consults this device so that she can suavely wind up in the right location.
Why didn’t I think of that? You know why. I’m a man.
Or so I surmise. Here’s where the gender issue gets confusing, though. When a stranger asks me directions and I don’t know the answer, I actually say “I don’t know.”
This was not the approach of an apparently helpful gent in Hope a couple of weekends ago. My friend and I stopped in a gas station store on the way to a getaway in Oliver and cleverly asked the cashier which was the shortest route. “I’m not sure,” she said, “but ask that guy over there. He’ll know.” The guy (a regular, I guess) not only knew, he cited in enormous detail how many km. we should drive down a certain road before we saw the green Indian carving that would indicate where we should turn right, which would have an apple orchard with five unripe Macintoshes on the third tree from the left, and so on. This fellow was one of those directions nerds that one occasionally has the misfortune to meet at a cocktail party. He was also obviously the world’s greatest authority on how to get to Oliver from Hope, which in this case made us feel like the luckiest people ever.
That was until we got to the next Visitors’ Information booth, where we asked a staff member to just clarify the eensiest, teensiest point in the guy’s directions. She looked at us like we were mad. “Why are you going that way?” she asked. “That’s going to add at least an hour to your trip.”
We had no reasonable answer.
Nevertheless, I had to feel a little triumphant. It’s true that I routinely get lost. It’s true that I am probably a man, and it took me 46 years to catch on. But unlike the gent in the gas station, I have finally mastered a look of extreme idiocy. So if some imperfect stranger asks me how to get from here to there, and I can’t tell them, at least they will leave it at that.
Writing > Humour
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