No sense of direction

My mom would say that the title of this post has to do with my life. While that may be true, in this case I'm referring to compass directions. I am notoriously bad at directions. I have absolutely no sense of direction. In gifted class back in high school, we had to take that one test to determine your personality. Or maybe it was the one that tells you what your career should be. In any case, one of the results was that "you suck at reading maps and have no sense of direction." And it was true.

When we were kids, we'd take lots of road trips. Back and forth between Houston and Dallas. Dallas to New Jersey. blah blah. I would never be in charge of the map, cuz I could never figure out if you were supposed to turn left or right on so and so street. I'm like Snooki.

You'd think you could just chalk it up to me being a stupid kid. Nope. When I got my license, I would constantly get lost. Whenever some poor fools needed a ride from the airport, and my mom wasn't available, I'd hafta drive out to O'Hare from Schaumburg to pick up visitors. Most of the time I could get there OK. The problem was going back home. There's just too many damn signs leaving the airport. I'd always wind up in some industrial park or out in Itasca. Saddest part is I knew I was bad at directions, so I'd actually have someone written step-by-step directions for me. Guess I needed bread crumbs.

Moving to the city was an absolute nightmare. Any time I was driving into the city from the burbs I'd hafta call one of my roommates and ask them which exit to get off. "Dood Brian, do I get off east or west? Hurry I'm about to pass the exit!" This went on for months before Brian finally got sick of my calls and told me about the whole "visualize the highway along Lake Michigan." Frankly, I'm surprised that worked.

I lived in Illinois for like 17 years. I drove the same routes for years. Once I somehow forgot how to get to Sandy's office downtown and ended up in the middle of nowhere. In my defense, we had just gotten back from vacation (that's why I'm not a lawyer but love lawyer movies, like A Time to Kill. Dood, he was able to get Samuel L. Jackson off of cold-blooded murder!) How does a grown ass man forget how to get from point A to point B when he's driven the route hundreds of times?!