Pennies in the Mailbox

Ever since I began to drive at 16, I have had a problem with directions- how to navigate from one place to another.  That's not to say that I CAN'T get myself from place to place, but I am MUCH more comfortable going about it after 10 or so previous attempts at the same route.  Without a gps (or VERY simple directions- like, as my late friend used to say, "Take the road to the exit...."-) my mind implodes.

 Once, at about 33, I drove to Georgia in one feld swoop- no GPS!  I had directions and my flip phone to call my friend in case I needed help.  I made it there and back just fine as it was basically a "straight shot" all the way.  (I was also very likely manic.)

Today I was invited to go out with a friend.  She wants to meet at her new place.  As she texted me the directions, my mind disintegrated from a nicely woven hat to a pile of tangled string on the floor.  I had asked for a ride from someone else and I got a half-yes- there, not back.  My friend can't drive me home because she intends on drinking. 

I figure I can take an Uber of Lyft home.  Its expensive but worth not having my brain stickily melted over my person.   I can't do this anytime we want to get together though- way more than a few dollars!

Its pretty much always been this way.  When I was in 2nd grade and 7 or 8 years old, I had taken a few pennies off my teacher's desk.  I felt guilty after a while and at recess decided to confess.  The first person I saw was an adult.  I told her of my dilemma, needing to give my teacher something.  "You can put it in her mailbox," the adult advised.  "Oh great!" I thought to myself, getting increasingly more anxious as the seconds ticked by - looking across an empty field to the long dirt road behind it.  "I don't know where she lives!"  (This was many years before email- even  Prodigy- existed.)

This is the same empty, lost feeling I get when going somewhere new for the first time now 40 years later!  (Thank goodness for Uber!  They have saved the day at least 3 times in my life so far- this being the third time.)  Even using a gps, I have a feeling of unrest- of trepidation, of an underlying anxiety as houses, street signs, and constrection barrels whip by.  Any second, I could- no, WILL get lost.  Will I pass my destination and then be in no man's land?  Mostly, it shows up out of the blue- several houses from the actual address.

As it turned out, my friend Karen offered to take me home- and she DID!- at 11:30 p.m.!

Thank goodness for stranger teachers at school, friends, moms, gps's, flip phones, and cell towers and satellites.  Without them, I'd truely be lost - perpetually in that feeling of disaster at any minute, still staring out across that field worried about "mailboxes".