The struggle that is navigating anywhere unfamiliar can be very real. I rely on my smartphone for help when I'm in a sticky situation and don't know where I'm going, as I suspect many of you do too. Forget even trying to use a map. That's just out of the question. So, here are just some of the struggles I know to be very real as a "navigationally challenged" driver:
1. Where there is a phone with a built-in GPS, there’s a way.
It’s not that you can’t navigate without the GPS… it’s just that you can’t navigate without a few wrong turns without the GPS.
2. Reading a map is hopeless. In fact, which way is even up on the map? LMK. (Refer back to the built-in GPS; always use the GPS.)
You would rather just continue driving in circles than have to take out a map, and read it. No one ever taught you how to do this and quite frankly, even if they had, you’d still probably have a few questions about it. Reading a map is not the same as reading anything else.
3. You opt for having road-trip (or 15 minutes away) car ride buddies because when the *inevitable* wrong turn does happen, they’re there to steer you back to your original destination.
This one is for you, friends who have stopped me from winding up places I don’t belong, and more importantly, shouldn’t be.
4. A person giving you directions is actually pretty comical.
They’re all like, “First, you’ll go North for about 10 miles and then you’ll head South East until you make a left and continue North again.” And you’re just like, “… I literally have no idea what you just said. Please only use lefts and rights. North, South, etc. means nothing to me.”
5. When you are lost and you call someone for help, they’ll ask you where you are. Which basically leaves you like, “IDK isn’t that the whole point of being lost?”
To which they’ll usually ask you, “What do you see?” And so begins the struggle that is, “… I’m somewhere in between a McDonalds and a gas station. I see a diner. There’s another gas station …"
6. On occasion, you’ll try to act like you know where you’re going, but it never ends in your favor.
7. Getting lost doesn’t only apply to driving.
8. It applies to supermarkets …
9. … Office buildings.
10. And any time you’re trying to find a bathroom … like, ever.
11. Road signs are way less helpful than intended.
This is in part because they might as well be a foreign language to you. And also because you focus so hard on what the signs means that your attention is shifted from the actual task at hand: driving.
12. Raise your hand if you’ve ever personally been victimized by a one way street.
It’s okay to admit it, we’ve all been there.
13. Someone choosing to follow you because they don’t know where they’re going either is just about your biggest nightmare.
It’s the very confused leading the even more confused, and just asking for trouble honestly.
