Lost in the Neighborhood

I'm mortified to know I've sent people the wrong way, but can I help it if I'm the kind of person whom people stop in the street to ask directions?

Oy. A man wandering around in front of the Apple store wanted to know how to get to a certain Japanese restaurant. The only Japanese restaurant that popped into my mind was the one about 10 blocks away, so that's where I sent him. It was the wrong one. I hope he saw the one he wanted when he passed by it. Same thing happened a few years ago when someone wanted directions to Austin Grill. I sent him to Rio Grande. Oops.

What is it about me? I either look like I know where I am and where I'm going, or like I won't stab strangers with a stiletto if they ask me questions. Probably a combination. But I get asked directions at least once a week, and sometimes once a day. Even when I'm the stranger in town.

A few years ago, in London, a lady in the Tube station kept asking me, "Way out? Way out?" I looked for the exit signs. They said "Way Out." Heh.

A couple of weeks ago I was wandering around the wilds of Colorado, in the canyons south of Boulder. The B&B I was staying at had a kind of hidden entrance, and I drove by it every single time I tried. Fortunately there was one landmark, a restaurant with a brightly lit sign, nearby, so that helped me find my way "home."

I was out for a stroll there one evening, and a man wandering down the street asked me directions! Fortunately he wanted directions to that restaurant with the brightly lit sign, so I could easily tell him - keep walking, it's on that side of the road, about an eighth of a mile.

The thing is, I would never try to meet friends for dinner someplace without the address, or go to a strange place without maps and printouts of directions. I just don't do that. The two-and-a-half-day jaunt to the canyon forests of Colorado for a family wedding required a notebook's worth of Google Map printouts that would have rivaled my European History folder from freshman year at Grinnell.

So maybe I look like I know where I am and where I'm going because I actually do. I research it. But I don't know all the Japanese and Tex-Mex restaurants in my own neighborhood because I just don't eat out that much.

Maybe I should eat out more. Good rationalizing, huh!?

Love, hosaa
Finding her own way, her own self and all