It’s hard for some people!

Confession: I suck at geography. Really. Embarrassingly bad at it.

Staring at the world map in our training room the other day was eye opening for me. I am ashamed to admit that many of those multicolored chunks of land were not at all where I expected them to be.

I get lost. A lot.

In my own hometown.

If someone tells me to head West on So and So street, my eyes glaze over. West? North? Starboard? Give me left or right, don’t give me instructions if using my thumb and index finger to make an “L” won’t help me.

There are places that I have visited a million times, but if I wasn’t the one who drove us there, I haven’t the foggiest idea how to get to them. It’s like they don’t exist on my internal brain-map.

I wouldn’t stake my Dr. Pepper LipSmacker on a bet requiring any kind of sense of direction, is what I’m saying.

There are so many times that I have called on Josh to act as my own personal navigator after finding myself completely and utterly lost, try as I may to follow my carefully printed directions to the letter.

Josh: You’re trying to get where? How in the world did you end up there?
Me: Hi, have we met? You are lucky I haven’t crossed any state borders yet.

I am constantly fighting that internal battle: Turn around and retrace or keep going? Dilemma!

Despite most of my loved ones having had first-hand experience listening to my panicky pleas to get on Mapquest right this second and getmeouttahere, (mixed in with exclaimations of “Whoops” and mutterings about one-way streets needing to be marked more clearly,) my dad was the first to see the light.  He and my stepmom got me a GPS for my birthday. I love it!

This thing is awesome. Oh, complex interstate system, where is your sting? Oh, poorly marked street sign, where is your victory? I will never get lost again! Um, unless I forget to charge the batteries (quite likely, actually.)

This morning I gave Rosie a spin (Yes, my GPS has a name. She talks to me, and very politely gives me warnings when a turn is coming up, so I think she deserves that much. It’s short for Compass Rose. HAR HAR.)

(On a side note, I think Rosie is moonlighting as the U-Scan voice at my local Kroger.)

We started off easy, with a path I am quite familiar with: my drive to work. I was smugly satisfied when I told Rosie to give me the fastest route, and she chose the exact one I have been taking for the last two years. I have not been wasting precious seconds by taking a slightly slower path! Take that, Mapquest and your poorly suggested routes!

The entire drive to work I was silently testing Rosie. Whenever I would spot an obscure street marker, I would glance over, sure that she had missed it. Every time, it was right there, clear as day across her screen. I grew more and more confident in my little navigator as we traversed the morning traffic, cheerfully responding, “Yes, ma’am!” when Rosie directed me to turn left in .3 miles.

It only got better when I dug a little deeper and discovered that Rosie can not only find every Chick-Fil-A within driving distance, she can tell me how to get there!

I’m in love.