Lost In Your Geography

You wanna keep traveling straight until you get to a left turn if you you see a big red barn you gone too far. You wanna go back. Then you get yourself turned around and head towards the hills in the distance until you get to a curly cue thing then go right. If you get to a big memorial rock you gone too far. You wanna go back. In fact, let me draw you a map...

I've had some pretty bad maps handed to me in my time. There is nothing wrong with a person admitting to being bad at directions, but there are volumes wrong with handing someone a crappy map. Better to just give an address. Let them use Mapquest. Wasn't that one of the commandments? I can almost hear the words resounding in booms from the burning bush. I'll also have you know that wasn't my fault, I found the bush that way.

The following story illustrates how map skills can prevent a nervous breakdown. I had a last minute call to meet some friends out in Boonie Town for a get-away weekend. Boonie Town here is just a descriptive phrase. My friend helpfully dropped off a hand drawn map on his way out of town and I was to travel later that afternoon with my daughter and Miniature Pinscher in tow. I gave a clever speech about how much she would love the place and convinced my seven year old to get in the car with a haphazardly thrown together backpack and a few CDs. The trip started well, the map was excellent, we listened to the entire soundtrack from Grease twice over and I was feeling fine. As Olivia Newton-John finished assuring Travolta that he was, indeed, the one that she wanted, I noticed a disturbing highway sign. The words on the sign didn't exactly correspond with what my map predicted. A fork appeared and I was starting to feel like toast as we quickly approached. Luck zoomed in and my cell phone rang. My friend threw a lifeline and told me to go straight with about two seconds to spare. I was saved from ending up in some place called Peachland.

Except for driving on a toll road that put the fear of death into anyone afraid of heights, the trip resumed its smooth progression and we put the soundtrack back on for a third round. The dog appeared to be covering her ears but remained tolerant. We passed through a town that appeared on my map and we were getting closer. I was feeling confident and rather relieved when we finally took the exit ramp off the main roads and started our ascent up the mountains to our weekend retreat. The sun was eying the horizon and I was glad we would arrive before dark. I turned off the CD and concentrated on watching out for cows. A note for future map artists; if you can draw cows on a map it's a helpful warning. They have little respect for the fact that moving vehicles will kill them. It was at this point that my map went from reasonably helpful to downright ridiculous. The words made no sense and the lines did not relate to any roads in this dimension. I found a hidden military base, a haunted house, and a black cow that would not let me return in the direction from which I came but I could not find a single road from that map. The sun began to set.

When I finally convinced the cow that I was menacing and managed to get past it, I tried to use my phone. As you can imagine there is no cell phone reception in Boonie Town. There I stood with spiky hair, wearing black cargo pants, a sleeveless shirt with The Clash emblazoned on it, a young child sitting on the hood of my car and a Miniature Pinscher tucked under arm waving my cell phone in the air trying to get a signal. Not only did the locals refuse to stop and help me out, they sped up with a terrified look on their faces. Every ounce of my overly thin frame screamed City Girl. Ready to give up and petrol myself all the way home, I finally managed to receive a call from my friend. I agreed to turn back around because he agreed not to ask which part of his map was wrong.

I consider myself good at following directions. I rarely get lost anymore. What I have learned is that if someone wants to draw me a map from now on they have to demonstrate that they can draw a proper stick person first.