Some people are born with a great sense of direction. I admire these people immensely. These are the people who can rent a car in a city they have never been to and navigate it like a native. These are the people who say things like “It’s easy to find….go south on main street for a few miles, then head east on 95 until you hit the bridge from then on, it’s home free”…Huh?? Do people really know the difference between east and west?? Are there people who can really gauge “a few” miles just by sense? I am not one of them. I am in awe of these super humans. You see I was not born with a poor sense of direction….I was born without a sense of direction. Seriously, I liken it to a birth defect. Maybe my mother went on a tilt- a -whirl when she was pregnant with me and my brain got scrambled? Or perhaps it is a genetic defect. In fact, it probably is. My father was also born with a missing sense of direction.
I remember times when my mother would announce that if we were going on a family trip that required more than one car that my father and I were not allowed to be alone in the same car. We would always get lost. We would go east instead of west. We would get off at the wrong exit. We would take a wrong turn and not discover our error until hours later. I am serious. The struggle is real. In the days before GPS, this truly was a problem. We would arrive at surprise parties long after the “surprise” if we made it at all.
I don’t know all the problems my poor father encountered over his life due to his non-existent sense of direction, but as for me?? I could get lost entering and leaving an office building. Once when I went to a new doctor’s office, it took me almost 30 minutes to find the exit, the elevator and my car! I needed high blood pressure medication by the time I got home.
I had serious anxiety attacks each time a new semester began in grad school. I had to park, find the building, find the class and then find my way back out again. No easy feat, because those of us with NSODS (no sense of direction syndrome) do not have the skills to automatically reverse directions without issue. It is like starting over again…starting over in a foreign country when you don’t know the roads. And heaven forbid it was dark when class was over…..that presented yet another layer of confusion. I spent my two years at grad school with heart palpitations and incredible stomach cramps from the anxiety brought on by my NSODS!
One of the more embarrassing moments connected to my NSODS came when I was meeting my divorce lawyer for the first time. Of course I was nervous. I had to drive 15 miles to her office. The road I had to take was a nightmare for of us afflicted with NSODS. It was one of those roads that you had to turn left on to stay on the road. If you stayed straight, as logic would dictate, then you would find yourself on the wrong road! Why do engineers do this to us? What kind of cruel joke is that?? Now I realize a person with a sense of direction would instinctively know to turn, but people like me?? We have the directions printed out, while we follow the gentle guidance of our GPS’ comforting voice and yet the odds are still high we will get lost. But I digress….
So I find the office, but then of course there is the panic of where to park?? Fate once again threw me to the wolves! Yep…it was the dreaded parking garage! The parking garage adds a whole new layer to NSODS panic attacks. Not only do I have to navigate down strange roads to find the building, but I have to find a parking spot, park the car and them remember where I parked, find my way out of the garage and back to the office. But wait, there’s more….once in the office building, I needed to find her office….phew…I need a nap just thinking about it. But I did it. Then I had to reverse the process, find my way out of the building and into the parking garage and my car. That is where the problem occurred.
When I got to the lot, I saw that you had to pay at a little window in the front of the garage. There you received a token to put in the machine that would lift the gate to freedom. I paid, and then went to look for my car…..and I looked and looked and looked and well…you get it… I couldn’t find it! I walked around for almost 45 minutes, and seriously contemplated calling my friend Kathy who lived nearby to come and drive me around the garage to find my car. I was almost in tears…when finally I found my car!!! Relieved, I got in and drove around a few times until I finally found the exit. I rolled down my window, put the token in and ……………………………….nothing. I waited and umm waited and……………………nothing. The cars behind me were piling up….after awhile the inevitable beeping and occasional “Move it lady” could be heard serenading me in the garage. I could feel the anxiety building. I didn’t know what was happening. Finally, an attendant came. I blurted out my problem and showed him my ticket, to prove I paid. He looked at the ticket, looked at me as though my IQ had dropped 80 points and said “This expired. You paid almost an hour ago. You need to pay more”…..I looked at the pay booth seemingly miles away as the tears streamed down my face. I guess he took pity on me and said or rather growled “never mind. He opened the gate and muttered “Just go” …I did, but of course I turned the wrong way out of the garage and got lost on my way home.
New Endings 