I’m directionally challenged and navigationally deficient

Without Mike, I honestly don’t know where I’d be.

I’m not talking about what my life would be like, I’m talking about WHERE I’d be.

I’m directionally challenged.

I can get lost in shopping malls and grocery stores and parking lots.

We’ve been taking the same Greenbelt path for 8 weeks, yet the other day I inexplicably began heading down an offshoot path (which clearly led to a dead end).

Sometimes, when we’re leaving a store or restaurant, Mike deliberately hangs back just to see which way I’ll go. I always (at least I’m consistent) begin heading in the wrong direction. Mike is consistently amused.

I once got lost in a Mexican desert with my mother and aunt. We were following a circular trail. A trail I’d run every day for the previous 6 weeks. Yet when I had relatives in my care, I somehow deviated from the path and took us on the “scenic” route. I pretended we weren’t lost. (We were lost).

I can get lost underwater: Once I was diving in Micronesia and I began following the wrong group of divers. My group was clad entirely in black wetsuits, yet I started swimming after a group of tourists all wearing matching hot pink dive gear. I didn’t notice. Mike had to swim after me and point me back in the right direction. I pretended like it was no big deal. (This was before I’d seen “Open Water”).

I can get lost in the air: An ex-stepfather was a pilot. For a year he trained me to fly a J3 Cub. “Which way is the airport?” he’d ask. I’d randomly point in a direction. I was never randomly correct.

Needless to say, corn mazes do not amuse me.

The only place I ever want to get lost is in a bookstore. Sadly, their exits are clearly marked.

Mike, on the other hand, was born with a GPS implanted in his brain. Sometimes, when he’s giving me directions to a location, he’ll use terms like, “head north” or “on the southwest corner.”

And I have to remind him: “I don’t speak compass.”

Of course, I have other strengths.

I can spell. I understand the differences between than and then, further and farther. (Okay, the latter pair only after my editor explained it to me). But you get my point.

While Mike keeps me from getting irrevocably lost, I’ve saved him from advertising “newly remolded” houses or telling people about events that are “open to the pubic.”

This is important stuff.

However, Mike is constantly improving his craft. He writes, he learns, he requires less of my intervention to curb his remolded pubic errors.

But how do you fix someone who is directionally challenged? How do I improve? How do I get a GPS implanted in MY brain?

I see no cure for my navigational deficiencies.

But that’s probably because I’m looking in the wrong direction.