In her great book of fears and phobias, What I Hate from A to Z, artist Roz Chast has this wonderful drawing for the fear of being lost.
By strange coincidence it is in fact quite similar to the map of Augusta. I had a map from Mr. Google that showed me how to reach my hotel.
However, the helpful young man at the car rental agency gave me a different route, which he swore was much easier. For some unfathomable reason I decided to take his advice, which is how I ended up hopelessly lost in nearby South Carolina. I did stop at a gas station to try and purchase a map and of course they no longer sell such things. I am old enough to remember when gas stations gave away free maps, but in those days gas stations only sold gas and oil, with perhaps a vending machine out front.
Then I come back to the ideas held by the medieval mapmakers, if you don’t know what is actually in a location, put in either a snake or a sea monster. So here are my maps of the area. First up in honor of getting totally lost is South Carolina.
A kindly policeman showed me how to reach the freeway, otherwise I would be wandering still along nearly identical roads. Then there is Georgia.
You have to navigate by memory, because the roads change names when they cross another road, and it apparently illegal for a road to go in only one direction. For example Gibbs Road becomes Cox Rd. , then turns into Owens Rd. What fun. But now the way is imprinted in my brain for the next visit.
I used to get lost a lot. When my daughter was small I said once, “I think I’ll go a different way,” and she said, “No, no, we’ll get lost!” My fear and frustration about getting lost obviously communicated to her at a very young age.
The GPS has helped me a lot … although it is sometimes wrong which is sort of scary. I used it all the time when we first moved to Colorado Springs. I used it in the DC area where I lived for 47 years – sometimes to get home because I couldn’t retrace my route.
My mother had the same geographically-challenged flaw; my father did not, and it annoyed him when, for example, people didn’t know which way was north. He had a genetic gyroscope I think. I wish I had inherited it.