An Inaccurate Reputation

Some  folks of my acquaintance have developed a view of me that is totally inaccurate.  It seems certain people (who shall remain nameless, except for Karen and Joel and Sheila and my Dear Wife and Johnnie Sullivan’s mom) don’t believe I am capable of finding my way around. I assure you this is the farthest thing from the truth.

I insist that I have never been lost – not in a car, on the water or in the woods, although to paraphrase Crockett, I have been “a mite bewildered” on occasion. Not with a rake, not behind a snake…wait, that’s another story. I was a boy scout and a paper boy, for Pete’s sake, and given sunlight or stars, I can find my way unerringly between Points A and B, thank you very much!

The truth notwithstanding, the aforementioned friends – and perhaps one or two others – miss no chance to claim I am directionally challenged. This misconception is apparently based on a few unfortunate but entirely unrepresentative incidents that I will now explain:

I was NOT lost that time when I was home on leave and told my girlfriend I knew a shortcut to Villa Montalvo. I really intended to take the long way from Campbell to Santa Cruz, via Pulgas. I thought it would be romantic!

When Joel came to Seattle, I wasn’t lost trying to find a place to eat, I just couldn’t decide. There were SO many choices! And it’s not like Joel couldn’t have spoken up.

Karen, for the record, it is one of our ingrained instincts to circle before alighting. The fact that we drove around the Lincoln Memorial seven times – seven, NOT eight – was just a response to a primordial urge and had nothing to do with any inability on my part to find the entrance to the parking lot.

Sheila, I know you always drive. it’s not that I don’t know my way around, I just don’t want to usurp your position of power by insisting I take the wheel. You are woman! Roar!

Pat, next time, wake up and read the damn map! I was busy driving, bro!

Mary, my darling, I know I’ve driven past the overpass on-ramp three hundred, six times. Next chance I’ll make it three hundred, seven. I LIKE the slower route. It relaxes my mind. And the time I drove thirty miles in precisely the wrong direction in West Virginia, you could have spoken up any time, dearie!

I shouldn’t have to explain that it was the fact that I hadn’t yet studied physics that led me and Johnnie Sullivan at age four to take off in pursuit of the ice cream truck, leaving us a mile from home with no idea in which direction home might actually lie. With no physics under our belt, we knew nothing of Doppler and could thus not divine that the ice cream truck’s siren song was steadily leaving us behind.  On a side note, I’m pretty sure that was the first spanking I actually still remember. Mrs. Sullivan knew nothing about Dopplers but turned out to be an expert at fanny tanning.

So, there you are, reasonable explanations that should easily put to rest these uncharitable assertions about my navigational prowess. And besides, all of the above are in the rapidly receding past. (Don’t say it, Mary!)