I, meanwhile, took 5 years of it. Like an idiot.
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I found myself in a perfect storm of
the things I dreaded most while walking about in public: my being the only
person in New York City who didn’t understand a single word of Spanish thanks
to taking a cumulative seven years of French and Latin instead of a language
that might one day be of actual use, my being terrible at any kind of small
talk with strangers and, most importantly, my sense of direction, which at best
could be described as “disturbingly bad.”
I’d long before given up the “never ask for directions!” creed that
marked a real man; no matter how many times I’d gone somewhere I had no problem
asking several times along the way where the hell I was going, and every time I
made it from point A to point B and back was a happy surprise.
My terrible sense of direction coupled
with my inability to talk to someone and hear a word they said made for several
problems. I’d
stop to ask someone for directions, and as they started talking I’d earnestly
nod my head as if hanging on every word, but my mind would drift away to
anything that wasn’t nearly as important as what the person was telling me. Once I noticed
the guy had stopped talking, I had a choice of asking him to repeat what he’d
said or simply thanking him and walking away like I’d heard his instructions
and knew exactly where I was going.
Obviously I always chose the latter, since I couldn’t let a complete
stranger whom I would never see again think I’d missed something he said,
therein making me look like an idiot. I
knew that in about another block or so I’d be stopping to ask someone else for
directions, partly hoping I’d gotten that much closer to my destination, and
mostly that I wouldn’t be sent back in the same direction I’d come, making me
have to do the walk of shame by the guy whose directions I’d completely blown
off only minutes before. It usually took
three or four such stops for any directions to finally stick.
Even worse than the guy thinking I was
an idiot would be that he was really rooting for me, and by making a wrong turn
I’d let him down. He’d watch me walk
away, thinking “Okay, great, he’s gonna turn left just like I told him…oh shit,
he turned right! Noooooooooo! No, buddy, no!” Sometimes people were nice enough to shout
out to me after a misstep, but since I didn’t want to face their disappointment
I’d pretend I didn’t hear them, and just keep walking.
As bad as I was at taking directions, I
was even worse at giving them. My usual
strategy was to say I was unfamiliar with the area (usually the truth), offer a
sincere apology, and start walking away.
Probably in the wrong direction.
If I was standing outside in front of my own loft and someone asked for
directions that were one block away, I’d act baffled, and then have to walk
around for awhile so the person wouldn’t see me pulling out a key and opening
the door to my building, fifty feet away from his target destination.
Sometimes I’d slip up and actually give
somebody directions, and then spend the next twenty minutes going over them in
my head, questioning whether or not I’d been correct. Then I had to worry that the guy had gone exactly
the way I told him, realized my directions were wrong, and wanted to come back
and beat the shit out of me. Never mind
that he’d been wandering around completely lost only minutes before; I’d assume
he was actually some sort of GPS savant who could not only find his way back to
where we’d met on the street, but also track down where I lived if need be, and
kill me for misleading him.
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