Directions

Blue Rock Station,
1190 Virginia Ridge Rd.
Philo Ohio 43771 USA
+1-740-674-4300 (phone)
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Most people give lousy directions.

At first I thought it might just be me. That perhaps I was a reverse idiot savant or something, incapable of following even the most basic instructions. But I've done some checking and determined through careful research that it is, in fact, someone else's fault. (Granted, there was a Ouija Board and a coin flip involved in this research... but still, like all good science, the results are valid because I agree with them.)

There are, however, various levels of incompetence. Like most of you, I have a brother-in-law who is the grand master of stupid directions. In fact I sometimes suspect that he was the one who told Moses the best way to get from Egypt to Israel (which explains why it took him 40 years).

I once went to visit my sister and her husband back when they lived in southern Maryland (They have since moved. I assume they went out for milk one day and couldn't find their way back.)

For some unknown reason (I'm thinking head trauma as a child) I asked my brother-in-law for directions. My brother-in-law (who I will refer to as Michael...which is his name) was only too happy to oblige. Michael is enthusiastic about directions. Typically they go something like this:

"Go south on I-95 for about six or seven miles. Then go east on Main. After about four miles you will see a small grocery store. It has a big red sign in the front that says Arthur's or Andrew's or something like that. Usually there's a tan Ford pickup truck parked right beside the road.... "

At this point I interrupt, "Do I turn right or left at the store?"

"No, just keep going straight for about another eight or nine miles...."

"Why are you telling me about a grocery store if I don't even turn there?" I ask, a dark feeling of foreboding creeps into my subconscious.

"That's where I usually buy a cup of coffee on my way home." he response to my stupid question. "Anyway, turn right onto Sycamore, go 2.589062 miles, then turn east onto Grand View Parkway. Grand View will twist and turn for a while. Eventually it will dead end into Oak Street. About six miles before you come to Oak Street, turn south on Hacker Circle. There are actually two ways to get to Hacker Circle, but take the second one. Once you go past the corner where the Coca Cola billboard used to be, make a sharp right. It'll look like a driveway, but it's really an alley that cuts between the houses. This'll save you a lot of time. If the gate is locked, just honk your horn and the old man who lives in the yellow house will open it. At the third turn, keep driving until you see a large collie with a red collar. Then turn south again. If you turn north you will end up on South Street, so be sure to turn south...."

Needless to say, I eventually end up somewhere south of Boise, Idaho...babbling incoherently.

And it's not just people, but it's the very system under which we operate that conspires to confuse. I speak, of course... of street numbers.

Who among us has not experienced the joy of trying to locate a place of business on a crowded six-lane drag strip, solely by its number? First, you might go seven or eight miles before you actually find a number that can be read from the road. Meanwhile, you're tooling along trying to spot numbers like a kid hunting Easter eggs.

You're looking for 20034 Main Street. The first number you see (written sideways on a signpost advertising hair transplants) is 1679. You figure you must still have quite a long way to go. Six blocks later you glimpse some white numbers above a bank door...7483. There seems to be a pattern here. The numbers are increasing. Your confidence builds. Then, nothing.

You go 10...11...12...blocks. No numbers. Suddenly, just when all hope was been abandoned, happy days are here again, the number18064 looms large and clear. You're almost there. You didn't miss it!

Three blocks later... 12057. Wait a minute... smaller?!! How can it be smaller? Your world is rocked. You also notice the name of the street has changed. Should you give up? Should you turn around? You decide that it's easier to just keep driving. You end up somewhere south of Boise...babbling incoherently. You see, it's not just me.

And just who comes up with these numbers anyway? There never seems to be a rhyme or reason. I live on a dead end dirt road. There are only four houses on the entire street. The number of my house is 32740. Apparently they had a lot of numbers leftover from those commercial streets that nobody was using.

Fortunately, as with all things, technology will soon solve this problem, or at least confuse us so totally that we forget what the problem was in the first place. I am waiting for a truly effective GPS system for my car so I won't have to rely on a random assortment of numbers or an equally random brother-in-law to get me from point A to point B.

I want to get into my car and say something like, "Find me the nearest Burger King." As I hit the gas, a pleasant little voice periodically breaks the silence.

"You're getting warmer," my car informs me. I turn left at the light.

"Colder..." she says with a slightly mocking lilt to her voice. I turn right.

"You're getting warmer." I continue on. "You're burning. You're so hot, you're like on the surface of the sun...."

Now these are instructions I can understand.

written by Jay Warmke - February, 2000

Which Way Is Up?