Tag Archives: driving

I MADE A WRONG TURN AND NOW I’M LOST

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One of the most difficult and frustrating challenges of my life has been my total lack of a sense of direction. Laugh all you want but the fact is that this deficit has affected every daily aspect of my life since I was a child.

I have tried to explain to people over the years that I just don’t have a sense of direction. That even if I have been somewhere many times before I have made the wrong turn and ended up terribly lost, and then the panic steps in and takes over. I have been lost for hours countless times. I can not even guess how many times I’ve been lost over the course of my lifetime.

I can not explain to anyone just how terrifying it is just to try and go from point A to point B without making a wrong turn and ending up in the wrong place. Why one time when I was visiting a friend of mine who lived about an hour and a half away from me in North Jersey, I lived in South-Central New Jersey I made a wrong turn and ended up at New Hope in Pennsylvania. Which is about an hour in the wrong direction from her house. Yes, I knew I made a wrong a wrong turn somewhere but I had no clue where. And I couldn’t figure out how to get to her house from Pennsylvania. I ended up calling her on a payphone {this was way before cell phones} and I told her where I was and what happened. And she drove there and I followed her to her home. I had driven to her house many times. But on this particular day, I made a wrong turn.

Ah, you think well that might have been a problem for you in the past but now that we have cell phones and a GPS getting lost is no longer a problem. Wrong my friends. I live out in the country and the signal is not reliable out here and can send you off in the totally wrong direction and you will end up who the hell knows where. I don’t.

Of course, as a child, I didn’t realize that I had this deficit. And I loved taking long walks around the little town that I grew up in and I also loved riding my bike even farther away from neighboring towns. Sometimes I would be gone for hours and my parents would be left wondering and worrying about where in the world I was at any given time.

When I finally arrived home late, they would be frantic and worried thinking something terrible had happened to me. They would call my friends and ask if they had seen me. And when I finally managed to find my way home I would try to explain that I got lost. And they would ask, “how did you get lost you gone over Helen, or Anne Marie’s house many times. How could you get lost?” And I would say, ” I don’t know I just did. I guess I made a wrong turn.”

And god forbid someone makes the mistake of stopping and asking me for directions. Because even if I have been living in the area for many, many years I am incapable of giving directions to people. It seems like I can only give them the initial direction from where I’m standing and no more. The rest of the directions are a complete mystery to me. People have said, “well, how long have you lived in this town?” And I’ll say almost twenty years.” And they respond well, how is that possible?”

I have no idea, but if you wait a few moments I’ll go get my husband and he can give you directions.” And they wait for a few minutes and then he easily gives them directions. I can see them shaking their heads and looking at me and clearly not understanding why I could tell them the same information. And the answer is, I don’t know why. I guess I’m just really bad at directions.

The only time I can get from point A to B is if someone, usually my husband writes the directions down step by step from my turn out of our driveway to my ultimate destination. I can follow directions but I can’ remember them. It is a mystery to me because I actually have an excellent memory but just not for directions. It’s a brain thing. And apparently, I’m missing that one part of my brain that tells me which way to go.

When I am going to the same destination several times a week I have no trouble getting there unless for some reason I have to go a different way. One day when I was going to my volunteer job one of the roads I took every time I went there was flooded out because of several days of rain. The river that ran next to the road rose and flooded the street. I had to turn around and try to find another path to my destination.

I spent a good hour driving all over the place and ultimately I had to go back home and have my husband drive his car and I followed him to my volunteer job. By the time I arrived, I was worn out and frustrated with myself for having such a difficult time finding my way around.

And to add insult to injury I have a similar problem when I go into buildings that I’m unfamiliar with. For instance, hospitals. Any building that has a great many halls with many doorways that look the same is like a maze to me. I can never find my way around.

I have to ask many people to give me directions to the doctor’s office or the lab where I need to have a blood test or a room where I have to get an x-ray. Just the thought of having to go to a hospital for a test fills me with anxiety. Not because I’m afraid of having the test done or finding out the results of the test but finding my way to the office or lab where I have to get the testing done. I know that sounds crazy but it’s the truth.

And then there are the experiences I’ve had within a dentist’s or doctor’s office when it is a large practice and many exam rooms. If I am told to go to Dr. So and So’s office and one of the office assistants takes me to the room all is good. But, if no one is available to take me out of the exam room and back to the receptionist’s desk you can be assured that I will make a wrong turn and be lost in the maze of look-a-like rooms and hallways and I could wander around in circles for quite a long time until I find a friendly face who is kind enough to take me to the receptionist desk.

It is believed that men have a better directional sense than women. But, the truth is I know many women that have a great sense of direction. I just don’t happen to be one of them.

After a lifetime of being on the edge every I go to a new place on my own I have learned to accept my shortcomings and my strengths. I was doing some research on what could be the possible causes for such a deficit such as no sense of direction and I found this out.

Professor Giuseppe Laria studied a potentially hereditary neurological condition known as Developmental Topographical Disorientation or DTD. This is what is believed to cause people such as myself to be unable to keep maps or directions in their minds. and be perpetually lost, sometimes in their own home. (thank goodness that hasn’t happened to me yet.)

It is reassuring that I am not alone in being unable to find my way around and that many other people suffer from this unique deficit. And even though I have struggled with this issue my entire life I managed to go to college, earn two degrees, have two children and stay married and relatively happy for most of my life. I have also lived in New Jersey, Florida, California, and now North Carolina and somehow managed to find my way to and from work, and school somehow, someway without a police escort pointing the way for me.

And so I look forward to hopefully quite a few more years of wandering in circles and seeing places I had no intention of seeing. And talking to people who are kind enough to give me directions, sometimes having to repeat the directions a couple of times to me. And so I wish you and I a Bon Voyage in our future life and maybe someday we may meet along the highway of life and I hope you will be so kind as to point me in the right direction.

 

LESSON LEARNED

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It was 1969, my senior year in high school. I was seventeen but would turn eighteen in May. Everyone else was doing it, had been doing it since they were sixteen. But not me, the other girls in my class told me I was a baby, asked me what I was waiting for?  What was I waiting for?

As my birthday drew closer, I made the decision I would do it. I would learn how to drive. But

Father’s old car

who would teach me, who? Well, the most likely candidate was my father, since he was the only member of my family who owned a car. My mother never learned how to drive. In fact, she seldom went in the car, except to the doctors, or the food store, and she didn’t go often.

My father was not an easy person to talk to. He was prickly like a porcupine, and you never knew what would set him off. He was in one word a grouch! In fact, his nickname in our family was” The Old Bear.”

So, the Sunday morning before my eighteenth birthday, I decided it would be D-day. The day I would ask my father to teach me to drive.

My father made his feelings about women driving no secret. He didn’t think that they should drive, could drive, or needed to drive. Up until now my transportation included my feet, my bike, and the bus, in that order.

So, as I sat down at the breakfast table after Mass, I cleared my throat and took a deep breath. My father was engrossed in reading the Sunday paper. He did not encourage talking at meals.

Nor did he encourage conversation, or other points of view. I had asked my mother’s opinion about talking to my father about driving. She said, “well I don’t know Susie you know how your father feels about girls driving. But I guess it can’t hurt to ask.

So, I did. “Dad, would you teach me to drive? You know I’ll be graduating from high school this year, and I’ll need to drive back and forth to whatever job I get.”

“Susan, you don’t have a car, so why would you need to learn how to drive?”

“Well, I countered, I can go on the bus back and forth to work, until I save enough money to buy a car. Then I would need to learn how to drive and get my drivers’ license. And then I wouldn’t have to take the bus anymore. I hate taking the bus. “ I said this all in one breath.

This wasn’t the best argument because my father worked for PTC. That was the Philadelphia Transportation Company; in other words, the Philadelphia bus company. He had been a trolley driver first, and then he was the head dispatcher for over thirty years. In other words, his life was all about the bus.

“You know Susie, if you are able to save enough money to buy a car, then you have to get insurance, in case you get in a car accident, did you know that?”

I had a very vague idea about that, from talking to some of my friends at school. “Dad I will get a job now, and start saving so by the time I graduate, I will have enough money to buy a car.” I had no idea if this was possible, or even where to buy a car, or how much it would cost. Up until now, the biggest purchase I had made was a movie ticket.

Just then my mother said,” Harry teach her to drive; she’ll need to learn at some point, why not now, before she graduates?”

I stared at my mother.I couldn’t believe she spoke up to my father. It was really unheard of. He rarely asked or wanted her opinion or anyone else’s. My father looks from my mother to me, and then with a loud sigh, he said, “OK, OK next Saturday, we’ll give it a try.”

Saturday arrived, and I was filled with excitement and trepidation. As I was finishing breakfast my father said, “all right, Susan get in the car, we’re going over to the Sears parking lot at the Moorestown Mall, and you will practice.”

As we pulled into the parking lot, my father said,” whatever I tell you to do, do it, nothing else.” We switched places in the front seat. My father explained how to sit properly in the seat, how to check the position of the mirrors, the signals, the gas pedal, and, most importantly, the brake.

“Susan, we’re just going to go from point A to B. Then, you will depress the brake, when I tell you, show me which is the gas pedal, which is the brake.” I was nervous and started biting my nails.

Off we went back and forth, back and forth, for about fifteen minutes. “OK Susan, now I want you to start turning the wheel, you’re going to drive in a circle.” I started to do that, although I didn’t make a perfect circle.

My father started yelling, louder and louder, “slow down, slow down, you’re going too fast. The louder he yelled the more nervous I got. I forgot which pedal was which. He told me to stop and,  I hit the gas pedal hard by mistake. We started heading toward a little building, Sear’s Auto Parts.

My father’s yelling got me so flustered I smashed right into a pile of car tires next to the side entrance of the building. Which was lucky for us, because otherwise I would have hit the building itself.

I let go of the wheel, and the gas pedal, and that is when we stopped, and my father reached over and hit me on my arm as hard as he could. That was the end of the driving lessons.  Without looking directly at me, my father said, “Get out of the car Susan.”

I got out, I was pretty shaken up, between the yelling, crashing into the tires, and then getting smacked. I could only remember my father hitting one other time, so I knew he was really, really mad.

I thought he was just going to drive away and leave me, but he said, Get in the back!”

After that, I asked my sister Betty to teach me to drive. She said she would. Even though she was married and had four kids. She found the time to teach me and take me to get my driver’s license test. The day I passed the test, I told my dad. And he just shook his head and said, “just what the world needs another woman behind the wheel.”