Xmastime, Directions Champ

This morning while standing in line for the Metro shuttle bus (ggggrrrr I hate this fucking city) a woman turned to me and asked “does this stop at Rosslyn?” and in a momentary lapse of all reason & sanity I actually answered her instead of feigning complete ignorance/pretending I couldn’t speak English.

"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “didn't you address this oh-so-lovable quality about yourself in your best non-selling debut novel, WILLIAMSBURG RATS: A MANNY'S TOUR OF DUTY?"

Sigh. Yes I did, faithful readers, YES I did:

As bad as I was at taking directions I was, incredibly, 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 to someplace on the same block 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, desperately wondering 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 kill 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 chop my fucking head off for misleading him.