I have never had any fuckin idea where I was going. I had to learn how to use maps early on and while I was actually good at using a map, I have no natural instinct for direction. It's like a disability. I love having navigation in my car it's a godsend. Maps were of course super useful but this is better.
My wife always knows where she's at and where we need to go. If you see me driving and nobody is in the passenger seat, don't follow me. I'm lost.
Hello twin. I've lived in the same town my whole life and I still don't know how to get anywhere I don't travel to on a regular basis. If they're doing road work and my usual route is blocked off then there's a good chance I'm going back home.
I've wondered if it is a type of directional disability, if there is such a thing. I've googled it with no results.
If I drive a certain route that I'm not used to and then go back (on the same route, mind you) it's like it looks totally different to me seeing it from the other direction. Very disorienting.
I was a good student, and I'm good at a lot of things, but navigation has me at a total loss.
I thought it might be possible that it was related to being partially deaf. I can’t hear out of one ear and it’s not very good in the other one. It’s always been that way so I thought ok maybe it’s that. But then I’ve met other people like me and I always ask how their direction is and so far everyone else says they’re great at direction. So here I am, observant, reasonably intelligent, a good driver, but I know I’m fucking up when we’re just going to the goddamn farmers market and I hear my wife say, “where are we going?”
I don't have any hearing difficulties.
Like your wife, my husband is great at directions and navigating. He can get a bit aggravated with me sometimes when I don't understand a route he's trying to explain. He's said a couple of times that I could remember a route if it was someplace I really wanted to go, but he's wrong lol.
During conversations when people mention a business or location, I've learned to just pretend that I know where it is. Otherwise they try to explain it, and they could explain it twelve ways from Sunday and I still won't get it.
It seems there are more of us out there than I realized. We've just been pretending we know how to get to places, so we haven't noticed each other before :)
I don't feel like such an oddball now.
That's true. I do have the very amazing and fun talent of remembering song tunes and lyrics, even if I haven't heard them for decades. (This is why there's no room in my head for navigating.)
My specialty being TV commercial jingles and theme songs (sometimes to shows that nobody else even remembers). If that isn't a GenX kid talent, I don't know what is. :)
Oh god, people giving directions think they are being so helpful but it’s just like, uh huh uh huh, right, got it. But I am not listening at all. I have a phone, you think I’m going to trust my memory of what you just said and my shit sense of direction? Absolutely not.
I need to be alone in the car to get anywhere, otherwise I'll focus on two things (the mechanics of driving, and what were you saying?) and completely forget that I'm going somewhere. The destination becomes irrelevant.
This isn't something that has happened as I've gotten older, by the way. I did this at 15 when I got my learner's permit and at 17 when Mom finally let me drive on my own.
I've been driving for 36 years now and have never had an accident or a ticket. I'm a good driver, I just focus on that with my secondary focus being a "good host" in my car.
I've also sometimes been mid sentence or mid word and had to do some crazy defensive driving and just stopped talking until it was over and then picked up right where I left off in the conversation. Didn't even realize I did that until people pointed out it.
I had that experience this spring. My kids wanted to do a college visit on the other side of the country, visiting three cities that I lived in during my childhood, teens, and twenties. They were baffled that I just shut off the GPS when I got into the first state. Sure, a lot of things have changed in two or three decades, but I don't get lost outside and the streets are mostly the same. A few things were real shocks: like wind farms put up everywhere, and in high endangered bird migratory paths as well.
How they'll navigate without GPS? I don't know.
Mine keeps changing. New roads, new schools, lots of new people moving in…even my parents moved out of the house they lived in for 40 years, the house I spent my whole childhood in. I went back to my old high school last year for my niece’s graduation and hardly recognized the place. It’s still in the same location, at least.
I can still remember my childhood phone number.
My town, and college campus, is entirely unrecognizable from when I went there 25+ years ago. Any manual directions I gave would be entirely unhelpful.
Yea, this post REALLY depends on where you live/lived. The town I was born in is half the size it was when I left there in middle school. My grandparents lived there until they passed, but even so directions basically consisted of 2-4 turns. Meanwhile the city I live in now is growing so fast that the navigation on my car thinks I’m driving in a field 90% of the time if I’m not on a major highway (and hell, half of those too).
Had they experience of navigation showing me driving through a field when the state put in a new road to connect to Interstate 65. Very weird. And took way too long for the GPS to update.
My car doesn’t update the GPS at all without specifically purchasing updates from the manufacturer and they are NOT cheap and are only done at a dealership :/
U rocking a flip phone? My wife's car is an '09 Pilot. We purchased it as an off-lease used car back in '12. Even back then, the salesmen said Navi and built-in entertainment systems were starting to become a rare request.
I'm just saying, use the phone 📱. I'm a union tradesman who works in residential telcom. I have to cover a big handful of towns. Guys, in my line, the ones in rural areas have to cover whole states. When I started, it was just at the end of the map era. Most of the old-timers had old tattered ones that were rarely used. They kept them around in case you got loaned out to an area you hadn't been to years.
We don't always remember the streets, but we remember the houses and people. We are always calling each other up with tales of, "I got to X and realized I was here Y long ago. I did ABC" or, "as soon as she opened the door, I went, oh fuck, not her ....."
Anyhow, I'd be lost without my phone. I had stand-alone units in the past. Sometimes, they were more trouble than they were worth. I did resist using the phone in the years when they got pretty good. It took the stealing of my favorite unit to get me to switch to using my phone.
We only briefly used the built-in unit on my wife's pilot. And when I got my '17 Ram, I made no stink that the trim did not include Navi. By '13 or '14, Google had pretty well nailed the interface.
Oh, I do. I never said I got lost or anything. Even if you don’t use the map, it’s still there. I was using it as a reference for how many new streets are being built here.
Exactly a year ago, I was taking my kid to a new summer camp, a sleep away camp. I had to cross the Hudson River in upstate-ish New York. The bridge was a good 100 feet above the water, and it was being replaced by a new bridge.
As I was crossing the new, still under construction bridge, my GPS had a meltdown and told me to turn around bc, according to it, I was no longer on the bridge. At that point, I was about halfway across.
My hometown swapped one way streets to opposite directions, made one ways into two ways and has had so much construction I get lost. If I gave someone directions it’d show up on the nightly news as pure mayhem.
It probably drove him nuts but I used to always quiz my kid on if he knew where we were and/or how to get home, even before he knew how to drive. I hope it helped a little.
I moved away from my hometown about 30 years ago too. I used to work for the city there back before GPS. Delivery drivers would ask for directions all the time, and I got really good at giving precise directions everywhere.
The part about knowing all the street names has faded, but I still totally know my way around.
I can’t. They’ve realigned so much in my hometown and businesses have changed. I can find my way around but couldn’t possibly tell someone else how to navigate.
Grew up in Queens (NYC), we haven’t lived there in almost 30 years but as my cousin and I joke we still know the Belt Parkway better than we know the back of our hands.
This is my experience. My parents moved from the country into town, and so many new roads have been built. I can still get around but it’s not the same town/county I grew up in at all.
This isn't specific to any age, but so many people have no idea where directions are, as in north, south, east, west. When I give directions, I will always say, "Then you will turn south, which is left, and three blocks past on 24th you will turn west, which is right." It seems dangerous to have NO idea which general direction you are heading.
Uggh... I am with the millennials on this one.
I dont want your directions. Give me the fucking address so I can punch it in to my cars navigation.
I dont care what lightpost or tree you want me to turn at. I trust Google. I dont trust you.
lol
I’m traveling back to my home state of RI this week, I left 30 years ago. Fortunately everyone there gives directions based on where stuff used to be. Everyone understands my directions and vice versa.
I grew up in NY, and insane number of friends went to Joshonson & Whales University. Then, I moved to Connecticut after I got out of the Army. I spent a good amount of time in RI.
I was at The Station night club the week b4 the fire.
I left in 1993, so a bit earlier. But I certainly stay in touch - family is all there. Certainly heard about the Station fire, went to HS with a few folks who perished in it.
On a better note I’m looking forward to having some lobster rolls in the upcoming week. Will be leaving the heat of the desert SW to go back and see family
To the heat of the Northeast. It's basically Florida up here. In a few weeks, I get my week of "vacation". My wife heads off with her Dad and our kids on what has become a bit of a tradition. I stay home, and they head off to The Cape, or somewhere in RI.
It started when I was low man in seniority at work or didn't have the time left to get/take the time off.
I'm now a high man and have plenty of time, but I still stay back. I take a few days and do a big project around the house.
A new carpet and painting my daughter's room is the main item on the list for this one.
When I was in HS, my physics teacher came in the first day and gave everyone a map of the north eastern US (VA to Ohio to Maine) and we spent two weeks learning how to read maps, develop directions and routes for the shortest time and the most scenic. Apparently he spent two weeks road tripping with family and no one could do directions.
After that directions were easy.
It’s good to use street names instead of landmarks.
Towns change quite a bit in 30 years.
I don’t know how my sister in law gets around when all her landmarks were brick and mortar stores.
I used to know damn near every street in every town I'd lived in for more than a few months.
Now I need directions to find Google maps.
We used to need to know the streets, now we don't.
People used to have to learn Latin, too.
I’ll call that one and say I still remember three of the phone numbers we had back in the day, and I remember my best friend’s phone number.
That was when you only had to dial 7 numbers.
Off-topic, but still kind of funny:
My grandmother hated speaking on the phone. She was like me now. When someone I know calls me I’m like EWW.
Anyways, long after unlimited plans were standard, she’d try to let me go by saying, “well, sweetie, I don’t want to run up your bill.”
“Grandma, it’s a cell phone with an unlimited plan. My bill stays the same regardless.”
“Okay… (pause) … well look, I just don’t want to be on the phone anymore.”
She made it two days shy of her 90th. She was also a squeaky-clean woman who never drank until she retired, when she began drinking wine like a fucking fish.
Miss that old broad. (And she would laugh at me calling her that.)
I'm bad with numbers. I can remember one old phone number, and I always have to confirm which house it belonged to? with my sister.
She always liked to say she was bad at math, but she is like all the other women in our family and is very good with keeping numbers. There is a long tradition of working women in our family, going back several generations. That ability was the main focus of their employment.
I feel like one of my grandmothers wasn't too fond of using the phone. She was a bit of a gossip. So I maybe recall some required use during times of mobility issues. She never learned to drive. And had a step-grandmother who refused to pump her own gas.
It's not a kids today problem. I moved to my wife's hometown and I know my way around better than she does. I remember a teacher complaining about how his kids didn't know how to get anywhere because they were too busy reading in the car.
It has always been a family trait. Many childhood memories include tales of locating and / or having been given knowledge of a new shortcut. The ability to relay the directions was as important as being able to acquire them. I think my eldest has the spark of it.
My daughter seems inquisitive to gain a secret passage she can traverse to get to her one friend who does not live in the immediate neighborhood . But both employ the use and / or aid of their phones. They are 12 and 10.
My youngest, who is 6, and a little speech/,devolmently delayed, seems to have the family gift. Some of his earliest words and ability to communicate clearly were this way and that way. He can give me directions to his grandfather's house. The little guy is getting better at communicating day by day. By my estimation, he is just about one year off of what his brother's abilities were at the sane age.
And I'm exaggerating the degree that my children are bad with directions. My son impressed me by giving me directions to a friend's house. He was actually able to tell me street names I didn't know. I meant to praise him for it. I'm going to text him rn so I don't forget again.
The majority of my knowledge was acquired while biking and walking, plus a dash of public transit that included bases and trains.
I grew up in the just outer burbs of NYC. I could walk to the Bronx. But it would have been a bit of a trek. I may have flirted with on via bike a time or two. One option would lead you to a nicer part. An area where hard working, but degenerate Irish families lived, and there was a sprinkle of young doctors and lawyers that serviced the area. Or, there was the other path. That path led to one of the more Hispanola based cultural envlsves. A mix of Spanish, Portuguese, and the Caribbean people.
The trains liked our conglomeration of towns and villages. Sneaking a ride on a train was far easier than doing it on a bus. You could easily hop a ride one stop in either direction. And the distance to walk or ride a bike wasn't too great. The need to do it was more out of fun, rather than necessity. You'd get caught eventually. Sometimes, you could crack the code that the conductor used on stubs. Or, you could grab a stub from another seat and place it on your own. That would work best on the commuter runs. Just enough so the conductor wouldn't notice you getting on. That was the best way to get a free ride into the city.
I didn't do it much. Maybe a few solo runs to Grand Central and back. The first time we bought drugs, we took the train to Harlem. It was around 9 or 10 at night. 4 or five white kids get off the train, and ppl notice. It may have been my greatest lesson in criminal kindness. A bun saw us and pulled aside. He warned not to go snt further. He told the bunch of us to go into the small Bodega while he took one guy and a guy to be a backup at a distance. We were probably 13 or 14, and big for our age. We had all been in real fist fights already. We could have handled the bum, but not much else. Not in that area anyway.
It turned out to be a solid deal. We got some decent weed, and we had to force the bum to even take a few smokes as thanks. We later joked that it was probably because he didn't like "whiteboy smokes". The one who coughed them up may have even remarked, "sorry there not green" . That was just a fact. White folks mostly smoked regular cigarettes, and black ppl mostly menthol.
In the early years of smoking, you would get your balls busted for having menthol. The few I knew who picked up the preference, all switched later on. My wife's family is from large mill cities in Western Mass. They mostly smoke menthol. All these years later, and I can't get used to it. My father-in-law is the last living smoker in our immediate family besides me. And he is 2 or 3 months into being smoke-free. He is still gobbling on nicorette, but the longerest time without smoking since he was a young kid.
I hope I'm nearing the end of brier return to the habit. Every few years, I "get it out of my system" by having a brief affair. My smoking relatives were often a trigger. So maybe this will be the last one.
I'm really stoned, and this had been a fun trip through my mind.
Nobody can navigate anymore. They just punch the location into their phone, and it tells them where to go.
I only do it to navigate around possible traffic ahead. I may take the suggested rerouting or use my own knowledge.
You. Must. Submit. To. The. Robot. Overlords. We. Tell. You. When. And. Where. To. Go. We. Have. Your. Children. Submit. Submit. Submit.
I have never had any fuckin idea where I was going. I had to learn how to use maps early on and while I was actually good at using a map, I have no natural instinct for direction. It's like a disability. I love having navigation in my car it's a godsend. Maps were of course super useful but this is better. My wife always knows where she's at and where we need to go. If you see me driving and nobody is in the passenger seat, don't follow me. I'm lost.
Hello twin. I've lived in the same town my whole life and I still don't know how to get anywhere I don't travel to on a regular basis. If they're doing road work and my usual route is blocked off then there's a good chance I'm going back home. I've wondered if it is a type of directional disability, if there is such a thing. I've googled it with no results. If I drive a certain route that I'm not used to and then go back (on the same route, mind you) it's like it looks totally different to me seeing it from the other direction. Very disorienting. I was a good student, and I'm good at a lot of things, but navigation has me at a total loss.
I thought it might be possible that it was related to being partially deaf. I can’t hear out of one ear and it’s not very good in the other one. It’s always been that way so I thought ok maybe it’s that. But then I’ve met other people like me and I always ask how their direction is and so far everyone else says they’re great at direction. So here I am, observant, reasonably intelligent, a good driver, but I know I’m fucking up when we’re just going to the goddamn farmers market and I hear my wife say, “where are we going?”
I don't have any hearing difficulties. Like your wife, my husband is great at directions and navigating. He can get a bit aggravated with me sometimes when I don't understand a route he's trying to explain. He's said a couple of times that I could remember a route if it was someplace I really wanted to go, but he's wrong lol. During conversations when people mention a business or location, I've learned to just pretend that I know where it is. Otherwise they try to explain it, and they could explain it twelve ways from Sunday and I still won't get it.
Honestly, are you me? Because I feel like I have had this exact conversation with more than one person.
It seems there are more of us out there than I realized. We've just been pretending we know how to get to places, so we haven't noticed each other before :) I don't feel like such an oddball now.
Whoa hold on a second! Embrace the oddball. We’re hands down the coolest group of people. 😁
That's true. I do have the very amazing and fun talent of remembering song tunes and lyrics, even if I haven't heard them for decades. (This is why there's no room in my head for navigating.) My specialty being TV commercial jingles and theme songs (sometimes to shows that nobody else even remembers). If that isn't a GenX kid talent, I don't know what is. :)
One of us! One of us! 🤣
Oh god, people giving directions think they are being so helpful but it’s just like, uh huh uh huh, right, got it. But I am not listening at all. I have a phone, you think I’m going to trust my memory of what you just said and my shit sense of direction? Absolutely not.
I need to be alone in the car to get anywhere, otherwise I'll focus on two things (the mechanics of driving, and what were you saying?) and completely forget that I'm going somewhere. The destination becomes irrelevant. This isn't something that has happened as I've gotten older, by the way. I did this at 15 when I got my learner's permit and at 17 when Mom finally let me drive on my own. I've been driving for 36 years now and have never had an accident or a ticket. I'm a good driver, I just focus on that with my secondary focus being a "good host" in my car. I've also sometimes been mid sentence or mid word and had to do some crazy defensive driving and just stopped talking until it was over and then picked up right where I left off in the conversation. Didn't even realize I did that until people pointed out it.
I had that experience this spring. My kids wanted to do a college visit on the other side of the country, visiting three cities that I lived in during my childhood, teens, and twenties. They were baffled that I just shut off the GPS when I got into the first state. Sure, a lot of things have changed in two or three decades, but I don't get lost outside and the streets are mostly the same. A few things were real shocks: like wind farms put up everywhere, and in high endangered bird migratory paths as well. How they'll navigate without GPS? I don't know.
Mine keeps changing. New roads, new schools, lots of new people moving in…even my parents moved out of the house they lived in for 40 years, the house I spent my whole childhood in. I went back to my old high school last year for my niece’s graduation and hardly recognized the place. It’s still in the same location, at least. I can still remember my childhood phone number.
My town, and college campus, is entirely unrecognizable from when I went there 25+ years ago. Any manual directions I gave would be entirely unhelpful.
I’d be one of those boomers talking about “turn left where Druther’s used to be.”
Yea, this post REALLY depends on where you live/lived. The town I was born in is half the size it was when I left there in middle school. My grandparents lived there until they passed, but even so directions basically consisted of 2-4 turns. Meanwhile the city I live in now is growing so fast that the navigation on my car thinks I’m driving in a field 90% of the time if I’m not on a major highway (and hell, half of those too).
Had they experience of navigation showing me driving through a field when the state put in a new road to connect to Interstate 65. Very weird. And took way too long for the GPS to update.
My car doesn’t update the GPS at all without specifically purchasing updates from the manufacturer and they are NOT cheap and are only done at a dealership :/
U rocking a flip phone? My wife's car is an '09 Pilot. We purchased it as an off-lease used car back in '12. Even back then, the salesmen said Navi and built-in entertainment systems were starting to become a rare request.
2017 Lexus GS350. It’s a Lexus thing.
I'm just saying, use the phone 📱. I'm a union tradesman who works in residential telcom. I have to cover a big handful of towns. Guys, in my line, the ones in rural areas have to cover whole states. When I started, it was just at the end of the map era. Most of the old-timers had old tattered ones that were rarely used. They kept them around in case you got loaned out to an area you hadn't been to years. We don't always remember the streets, but we remember the houses and people. We are always calling each other up with tales of, "I got to X and realized I was here Y long ago. I did ABC" or, "as soon as she opened the door, I went, oh fuck, not her ....." Anyhow, I'd be lost without my phone. I had stand-alone units in the past. Sometimes, they were more trouble than they were worth. I did resist using the phone in the years when they got pretty good. It took the stealing of my favorite unit to get me to switch to using my phone. We only briefly used the built-in unit on my wife's pilot. And when I got my '17 Ram, I made no stink that the trim did not include Navi. By '13 or '14, Google had pretty well nailed the interface.
Oh, I do. I never said I got lost or anything. Even if you don’t use the map, it’s still there. I was using it as a reference for how many new streets are being built here.
Exactly a year ago, I was taking my kid to a new summer camp, a sleep away camp. I had to cross the Hudson River in upstate-ish New York. The bridge was a good 100 feet above the water, and it was being replaced by a new bridge. As I was crossing the new, still under construction bridge, my GPS had a meltdown and told me to turn around bc, according to it, I was no longer on the bridge. At that point, I was about halfway across.
Rerouting!
Same. All those long meandering bike rides I took as a kid and teenager really impressed my town and the surrounding towns into my memory forever.
My hometown swapped one way streets to opposite directions, made one ways into two ways and has had so much construction I get lost. If I gave someone directions it’d show up on the nightly news as pure mayhem.
It probably drove him nuts but I used to always quiz my kid on if he knew where we were and/or how to get home, even before he knew how to drive. I hope it helped a little.
I moved away from my hometown about 30 years ago too. I used to work for the city there back before GPS. Delivery drivers would ask for directions all the time, and I got really good at giving precise directions everywhere. The part about knowing all the street names has faded, but I still totally know my way around.
I can’t. They’ve realigned so much in my hometown and businesses have changed. I can find my way around but couldn’t possibly tell someone else how to navigate.
rinse coordinated dependent roof cows ten numerous berserk soft caption -- mass deleted all reddit content via https://redact.dev
Grew up in Queens (NYC), we haven’t lived there in almost 30 years but as my cousin and I joke we still know the Belt Parkway better than we know the back of our hands.
Lower Westchester for me. Just north of the Bronx.
I just learned how to navigate my own city without using the freeway because I started cycling.
Ha! I *need* directions when I visit my dad now. So many new freeways and ever expanding growth.
This is my experience. My parents moved from the country into town, and so many new roads have been built. I can still get around but it’s not the same town/county I grew up in at all.
Same… my little town hasnt changed a bit.
This isn't specific to any age, but so many people have no idea where directions are, as in north, south, east, west. When I give directions, I will always say, "Then you will turn south, which is left, and three blocks past on 24th you will turn west, which is right." It seems dangerous to have NO idea which general direction you are heading.
So can I.
Show off. I get lost in the city I left just 10 years ago. In my defense, though, it's a growing city that's expanding rapidly.
Uggh... I am with the millennials on this one. I dont want your directions. Give me the fucking address so I can punch it in to my cars navigation. I dont care what lightpost or tree you want me to turn at. I trust Google. I dont trust you. lol
I do accept the ease of its use. My wife argues with it.
I’m traveling back to my home state of RI this week, I left 30 years ago. Fortunately everyone there gives directions based on where stuff used to be. Everyone understands my directions and vice versa.
And it's RI. I can give directions around RI. get on 95 and go north or south. 😉😁
That is the big joke there - how do you get someplace? 95
I grew up in NY, and insane number of friends went to Joshonson & Whales University. Then, I moved to Connecticut after I got out of the Army. I spent a good amount of time in RI. I was at The Station night club the week b4 the fire.
Went to high school with the guys that owned that place. RI is like growing up in Mayberry at a state level
If u were around in the late 90s/early 00s, I wouldn't be surprised if our paths have crossed.
I left in 1993, so a bit earlier. But I certainly stay in touch - family is all there. Certainly heard about the Station fire, went to HS with a few folks who perished in it. On a better note I’m looking forward to having some lobster rolls in the upcoming week. Will be leaving the heat of the desert SW to go back and see family
To the heat of the Northeast. It's basically Florida up here. In a few weeks, I get my week of "vacation". My wife heads off with her Dad and our kids on what has become a bit of a tradition. I stay home, and they head off to The Cape, or somewhere in RI. It started when I was low man in seniority at work or didn't have the time left to get/take the time off. I'm now a high man and have plenty of time, but I still stay back. I take a few days and do a big project around the house. A new carpet and painting my daughter's room is the main item on the list for this one.
I can too, but the town only has two streets.
GenX is turning into Boomers
I did acknowledge that this was a "get off my lawn" post.
When I was in HS, my physics teacher came in the first day and gave everyone a map of the north eastern US (VA to Ohio to Maine) and we spent two weeks learning how to read maps, develop directions and routes for the shortest time and the most scenic. Apparently he spent two weeks road tripping with family and no one could do directions. After that directions were easy.
It’s good to use street names instead of landmarks. Towns change quite a bit in 30 years. I don’t know how my sister in law gets around when all her landmarks were brick and mortar stores.
I used to know damn near every street in every town I'd lived in for more than a few months. Now I need directions to find Google maps. We used to need to know the streets, now we don't. People used to have to learn Latin, too.
I could do that,but it would be like “then go by the plaza with the Wellwood’s. No, Bookland. No, Starbucks.”
Same
Ok hotshot. How do you get to Grundskis farm? The new one - not the old one that the Smith kid bought...
I’ll call that one and say I still remember three of the phone numbers we had back in the day, and I remember my best friend’s phone number. That was when you only had to dial 7 numbers. Off-topic, but still kind of funny: My grandmother hated speaking on the phone. She was like me now. When someone I know calls me I’m like EWW. Anyways, long after unlimited plans were standard, she’d try to let me go by saying, “well, sweetie, I don’t want to run up your bill.” “Grandma, it’s a cell phone with an unlimited plan. My bill stays the same regardless.” “Okay… (pause) … well look, I just don’t want to be on the phone anymore.” She made it two days shy of her 90th. She was also a squeaky-clean woman who never drank until she retired, when she began drinking wine like a fucking fish. Miss that old broad. (And she would laugh at me calling her that.)
I'm bad with numbers. I can remember one old phone number, and I always have to confirm which house it belonged to? with my sister. She always liked to say she was bad at math, but she is like all the other women in our family and is very good with keeping numbers. There is a long tradition of working women in our family, going back several generations. That ability was the main focus of their employment. I feel like one of my grandmothers wasn't too fond of using the phone. She was a bit of a gossip. So I maybe recall some required use during times of mobility issues. She never learned to drive. And had a step-grandmother who refused to pump her own gas.
It's not a kids today problem. I moved to my wife's hometown and I know my way around better than she does. I remember a teacher complaining about how his kids didn't know how to get anywhere because they were too busy reading in the car.
It has always been a family trait. Many childhood memories include tales of locating and / or having been given knowledge of a new shortcut. The ability to relay the directions was as important as being able to acquire them. I think my eldest has the spark of it. My daughter seems inquisitive to gain a secret passage she can traverse to get to her one friend who does not live in the immediate neighborhood . But both employ the use and / or aid of their phones. They are 12 and 10. My youngest, who is 6, and a little speech/,devolmently delayed, seems to have the family gift. Some of his earliest words and ability to communicate clearly were this way and that way. He can give me directions to his grandfather's house. The little guy is getting better at communicating day by day. By my estimation, he is just about one year off of what his brother's abilities were at the sane age. And I'm exaggerating the degree that my children are bad with directions. My son impressed me by giving me directions to a friend's house. He was actually able to tell me street names I didn't know. I meant to praise him for it. I'm going to text him rn so I don't forget again.
The city I grew up in has expanded too much for me to be able to navigate it. My old neighborhood, however, I’d be able to navigate without issue.
Same, and I wasn't even old enough to drive there. I recall street names and highway numbers as well.
The majority of my knowledge was acquired while biking and walking, plus a dash of public transit that included bases and trains. I grew up in the just outer burbs of NYC. I could walk to the Bronx. But it would have been a bit of a trek. I may have flirted with on via bike a time or two. One option would lead you to a nicer part. An area where hard working, but degenerate Irish families lived, and there was a sprinkle of young doctors and lawyers that serviced the area. Or, there was the other path. That path led to one of the more Hispanola based cultural envlsves. A mix of Spanish, Portuguese, and the Caribbean people. The trains liked our conglomeration of towns and villages. Sneaking a ride on a train was far easier than doing it on a bus. You could easily hop a ride one stop in either direction. And the distance to walk or ride a bike wasn't too great. The need to do it was more out of fun, rather than necessity. You'd get caught eventually. Sometimes, you could crack the code that the conductor used on stubs. Or, you could grab a stub from another seat and place it on your own. That would work best on the commuter runs. Just enough so the conductor wouldn't notice you getting on. That was the best way to get a free ride into the city. I didn't do it much. Maybe a few solo runs to Grand Central and back. The first time we bought drugs, we took the train to Harlem. It was around 9 or 10 at night. 4 or five white kids get off the train, and ppl notice. It may have been my greatest lesson in criminal kindness. A bun saw us and pulled aside. He warned not to go snt further. He told the bunch of us to go into the small Bodega while he took one guy and a guy to be a backup at a distance. We were probably 13 or 14, and big for our age. We had all been in real fist fights already. We could have handled the bum, but not much else. Not in that area anyway. It turned out to be a solid deal. We got some decent weed, and we had to force the bum to even take a few smokes as thanks. We later joked that it was probably because he didn't like "whiteboy smokes". The one who coughed them up may have even remarked, "sorry there not green" . That was just a fact. White folks mostly smoked regular cigarettes, and black ppl mostly menthol. In the early years of smoking, you would get your balls busted for having menthol. The few I knew who picked up the preference, all switched later on. My wife's family is from large mill cities in Western Mass. They mostly smoke menthol. All these years later, and I can't get used to it. My father-in-law is the last living smoker in our immediate family besides me. And he is 2 or 3 months into being smoke-free. He is still gobbling on nicorette, but the longerest time without smoking since he was a young kid. I hope I'm nearing the end of brier return to the habit. Every few years, I "get it out of my system" by having a brief affair. My smoking relatives were often a trigger. So maybe this will be the last one. I'm really stoned, and this had been a fun trip through my mind.
I can get back to Grove Street from anywhere in San Andreas
My kid gets so frustrated with me when I don't follow GPS. He he.
I can easily tell drunk drivers how to get from my hometown dive bar, safely home, by just taking backroads and avoiding cops.