SoCal Suburbia

A Sense of Direction

My mother has no sense of direction. Period. Once, when I was about eight, she was taking my younger brother and me to a Chuck E. Cheese's, not too far away; half an hour at most. Somehow, she ended up on the freeway. Could be worse. She could have been on the freeway to San Francisco.

I suspect this is hereditary. I have, you see, inherited this lack of an inner compass.

This morning, from nine to ten, my school's theatre company was having a flyer/poster/postcard distribution. (I was out until half past one last night at a concert, but I came anyway.) Basically, we were given a route, a map, a stack of posters, and the advice that it's illegal to put anything completely inside a person's mailbox (it's soliciting.) I myself have lived in this city practically my entire life, but I am not exactly capable of navigating through it myself- this is mainly because I'm not really allowed to walk anywhere. Well, fine. I joined a group with three other people, one of whom knew his way around basically, one who was new to the city, and one who actually attends another school but is a member of the theatre company.

Not exactly an intelligent group choice, I know. Still, safety in numbers. That in mind, we set off. We were hardly a block away when we first got lost.

On our maps- courtesy of Mapquest- there was something that was slightly unclear. There are two streets of the same name (actually it's the same street, but it stops and then starts again three blocks away) in the area, and most of the second part was cut off; it was, however, the more obvious part, as it was right on the edge of the map. It also happened to be a few blocks away from where we were supposed to be.

So there we are, staring at our maps- we had four copies of the same thing- and staring at entirely the wrong part of it. Somehow, we had convinced ourselves that we were somewhere we were not. Deciding to be adventurous, I suggest we begin marching off in a random direction, hoping to somehow get an idea of where we were. Brilliant idea, I know.

And then, all of a sudden, my friend Lexa looks up from her maps and comments "There are two Garfields."

posted by Lucy @ 5:18 PM