If you ever feel the urge to tell me where to go, please refrain from using dirty four letter words like ‘east” and “west”. I can cope with instructions of left and right, up and down, but anything more and you may as well be speaking Mandarin, of which I should explain, I know nothing beyond the greeting “Nǐ hǎo”.
It’s a terrible affliction being directionally challenged. I learned long ago to compensate by leaving super early prior to any appointments, allowing time for getting lost. It doesn’t matter if I have travelled a route dozens of times, I can still lose my way. I shock myself sometimes at how inept I am.
Being directionally challenged is an affliction.Credit:SMH
During my teens and early twenties, I was pretty good at getting myself from place to place. With separated parents who lived many kilometres apart, I mastered reading timetables and almost always managed to get on the right train or bus.
Then came my mid twenties and my first car. With this new found independence came a whole world of missed turns, “scenic tours” and wrong destinations. These were the days before smart phones with google maps, and car navigation devices were an expensive novelty. The Gregory’s street directory was my only guidance. I rotated the book with each turn so that the map faced the direction I was travelling.
