andrew_jorgensen | (no subject)

Shaker Heights is noted for its diversity, but as far as its street names go, it's wall-to-wall whitey here. Every road bears a faux tweedy, upper-crust English moniker, with some lowlands Scots mixed in around the bad parts of town. This can get a little confusing, so if you're driving by Horseshoe Lake, and you see me out running, and if my body, forced to consume its own fatty deposits, has decided to ignore my belly and instead start eating into my gray matter, and you ask me how to get to Claythorne Road, it is entirely likely that I will give you authoritative, impeccably correct directions to Sherbrooke.

There is a cliché, or to a sociobiologist, a datum, that men are less willing to stop and ask for directions than are women. I cannot speak to the accuracy of such a suggestion, or to its possible cause, but I know that I'll almost never ask a stranger for assistance. I suspect though that this is not due to some innate feature of the Y chromosome, but instead is a behavioral tendency learned after a long history of being stopped and asked for directions. I am a very courteous person -- does a good deed daily -- and I have a phenomenal geographic sense -- taught the orienteering merit badge -- so I always try to help people out. But ten minutes later I realize that the directions which seemed so sensible at the time I gave them were in some way crap and I've just made things immensely worse. I suspect many people have had this experience, and been discouraged from asking for directions of their own by their own examples. Perhaps it is an experience shared by a larger proportion of men than of women, because at the same time that the patriarchy is spewing out misdirection and confuddlement, we're also serving up large amounts of propaganda extolling our putative superior spatial facilities.

So, really, ask women for directions, or just anyone but me, and try to live in a city with the streets laid out in a nice numbered grid.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I wonder if this explains my urge to take people where they need to go when asked for directions....

Are you grabbing them by the earlobes?

Surprisingly, no. I usually want to take them by the hand and lead them around.

*nods* I also prefer to have someone physically take me along rather than give me verbal directions (unless they're v. v. good at verbal directions, and even then.... ditto well-drawn maps, esp. since not all intersections actually have street signs).

Yeah, I draw little maps out too ("Okay, so we're here and you go this way for two blocks..."). Complete with arrows and landmarks.

The next time you are asked for directions you could, rather than give a detailed itinerary, simply intone "not all who wander are lost". Of course, people may think you are insane but proceeding thus does have the net advantage of circumventing the gender spatial abilities issue:)

Yes, because people think I'm so sane already.

I've just made things immensely worse. I suspect many people have had this experience, and been discouraged from asking for directions of their own by their own examples

More like by getting very lost after asking. ;)

I love my maps.

Oh, yeah, give me a map, a single landmark, and something by which to orient the map and I'm happy.

I think that's why I like spending time indoors at home. People don't ask directions so often, if they can't find you.

It's worst when you know exactly how they need to go, but know it's so complicated they'll never remember what you said. And you know that the chances they will have paper and a writing instrument to write it down are near zero. I have often given people directions on how to get closer and told them to ask for directions again when they got that far.

Germans were forever asking me for directions when I was in Germany. I barely knew where I was, let alone where they wanted to go.

On the other hand sometimes its easy. I was in Copenhagen once when an American couple came up to me timidly. Thinking I must be a local the husband tried to mumble the name of a famous furniture gallery in Danish to get me to understand. I pointed the way they were already headed, and said, "It's just down the street past the bank."

I get asked for directions overseas a lot. There was one woman in Berlin who was very annoyed that I would claim not to speak German. Of course I was blonder then.

I'm impressed that you can find either Claythorne or Sherbrooke. I haven't a clue where either is. I think Claythorne is down by US, maybe the one the Shattingers lived on. You must be running farther than I thought!

I did overshoot the house the other day. I was so pleased with myself in figuring out where I was and then I just drove right by the house. Of course, I'm sure you're surprised I did it only once. I sat down and drew a neighborhood map so I'd get it straight, but I still have to stop and think where I am. I don't remember being this spacially (what is that word??) challenged when I was younger. But then again, my houses were easier to find. How can you overshoot Rockefellar's gigantic gothic Baptist church?

I take it then the bloom is off the azalea.

Claythorne runs cattycorner from Warrensville and Shaker towards US, so technically the directions I gave the woman ("Continue down this [South Park] and then it's to the left on the other side of Hathaway Brown") were correct, if misleading.

Yeah, the azaleas are not blooming. Nor is the yucca plant at the corner of Barksdale and Cowden. Oh for a parrot fish as landmark

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