| Tuesday, September 06, 2005 |
| Lack of Direction |
Kelly and I really enjoyed our Labor Day weekend. We were incredibly busy, but had plenty of time to enjoy ourselves. Since this is my last week here at Christ's Church I'm starting to reflect a little more on all that's happened during the past few years. It was this reflective mood that allowed me to see a fault in myself this weekend. However badly I want to keep it from you, I believe that the world will be a better place if I just admit it to you all:
I hate to get directions.
So what? "Just a typical male," you mutter to yourself. But it's a real problem with me. God has given me an internal GPS system that allows me to get my bearings better than the average person. Why should I use maps like normal people? But every once in awhile there's some interference with the incoming signal. And when that happens, it can be a problem. Just this weekend I had three different instances in which this flaw of mine reared it's ugly head. Let me list these incidents for you:
Incident One: Friday night. there's a birthday party for my Grandfather at my aunt and uncle's house. They live relatively nearby, so why bother to get directions? I hadn't been to their house in over fifteen years, but I knew the general vicinity of how to get there. Or, at least I thought I did. I found what I thought to be their neighborhood and drove around for about five minutes. Nothing. After backtracking six different times I finally call my brother who informs me that I was about half-a-mile south of where I needed to be.
Incident Two: Saturday morning. there's the Bright, Indiana softball tournament in Harrison, Ohio [doesn't make sense to me to host a softball tournament in an entirely different state, but who am I to question?]. Last year when we went, we took the long way to get to the park. I knew a backroad shortcut, capable of subtracting five minutes from the drive. I was driving separately from the rest of our team in case we went far in the tournament; this way I could get back for church Saturday night [um, I didn't end up needing to drive separate]. Working with my dad's business in high school and college gave me familiarity of the area and knowledge of the shortcut, so why bother to get directions? Of course, there was a thick fog that morning and I totally drove past the street the ballfields were on. I wasn't late but I didn't beat our team there, which meant I heard it from them all morning. I did find the shortcut on the way back though. So suck on that.
Incident Three: Monday afternoon. we're looking for a Cingular Wireless store so we can switch over our cell phones. We've had Nextel, but most of Kelly's family has Cingular, so she [and we] will be able to talk to each other for free. Kelly looked in the phone book for a store and found one in the Union Center area. "Piece of cake," I thought to myself, "Union Center isn't that big so surely we'll be able to find it easily." True, Union Center does straddle both sides of Interstate 75, but it's all new construction, so it should've been simple. After ten minutes of searching we stopped in the Barnes and Noble to look in an atlas [and for a quick bathroom break]. We couldn't find the street on a map. After seven more minutes of meaningless searching I finally broke down. The weekend had gotten the best of me and I did the unthinkable:
I stopped in a gas station to ask directions.
To my credit, the store was two miles away in a place not even considered as Union Center. And the street name that was in the phone book wasn't even there. It was in a strip mall on the corner of a major intersection. But still, I've been defeated. This whole weekend really has me doubting myself. I'm almost depressed.
But then again, just five minutes ago Howard walked in to my office; we're doing a funeral together up in Washington Court House this morning and he said we'll need to get directions to the cemetery. Directions? Ha! Who needs those? |
yet another musing of steve-o @ 6:58:00 AM  |
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