Directionality

I'm a third generation “can't seem to give proper directions” type of girl-type person.

No, I'm not from Maine. And you can most certainly get there from here, if only we knew how to communicate.

Mom and her dad, Pop, have legitimate excuses – English is their second language, Penna Dutch being the first. But Mom's excuse went flying out the window when she graduated from college with a degree in teaching... and English studies.

So what's the problem?

Long memory.

Penna Dutch stay close to home – or, well, used to. Grenny and Pop took a few bus tours to see places, like Nashville (Grand Ol' Opry) and New York City (Rockettes) but the bus trip to Florida (St. Augustine and Disney), that was their trip of a lifetime. Mom taking Pop and I to the Phillies baseball games were amazing treats – but by then, I was an experienced traveler. Mom and Dad had been taking multi-day trips with me since I was a swaddler, and we haven't stopped. (Four more states, and I'll have collected the set!)

And with the stories we tell, generation to generation, and the fact that my grandfather's life spanned the Wright Brothers' flight to space shuttle launches, I have four generation's worth of memories stuffed in my head. Maybe five, if I squint hard. I wonder how many Pop had, and how many my mom has.

It causes... timing issues in the Theory of Mind.

It's not a form of historical time blindness. History keepers on both sides of the family can tell you with unerring accuracy what happend, when, and what occurred before or after. It's not a matter of forgetting, it's a matter of forgetting that your audience really doesn't care about something that happened before their time or was of little consequence to them so it wasn't recorded as important... but that the Imparter of Wisdom sees as Incredibly Important Information.

The first story happened when I was a kid. Mom had to go to my cousin's house to pick up something or another, but we'd never been there. That's not terribly unusual, even in our large but close-knit family, since we all met at the two biggest farms for shindigs – Pop and Grenny's farm, or my aunt's (Mom's sister's) farm. Cousin's house, while also on a farm, wasn't nearly as big and cluttered with stuff and things and even more stuff. Mom knew my cousin lived on the backside of a particular small town, but where? Oh, but Pop knew! Pop knew All the Places! And he gave detailed directions as only a Penna Dutch would, with lots of physical details. Trees, houses, barns, silos. Street names? Optional.

But one instruction was a bit less clear: “Turn left at the store that burned down.”

Mom didn't take anyone along when she went on her extended foray into the unknown. Which is good in retrospect, becaue I would have learned words in two different languages that I shouldn't know even today, with over a half-century under my belt.

She snarled about it for years. Then finally took me there, to prove her point, the next time she had to visit said cousin. She screeched to a stop and pointed - “That's the store that burned down! What do you see??”

A green field.

When you talk about a store that burned down, you'd think, what? Charred timbers, some kind of foundation maybe, an outline? It was a field, people. A pasture. Same as all the others for miles and miles around.

That store burned down at least forty years before the point where I was staring at some innocent-looking grass blades. All the leftover timbers had been collected for wood stoves within a year of the fire, and I'm pretty sure there had never been more of a foundation than some wooden beams plunked on hard-packed soil. Grass has a tendency to literally eat that for breakfast.

And if that were a one-off story, I wouldn't be so salty, would I?

Fast forward a few years.

I was a late bloomer to driving, because I took the responsibility of driving tons of metal, plastic, and wood seriously. I was an only child, and Dad looooves driving, so my teenage school activities were rather covered in that respect.

After college? Yeah, it's time to take that gear shift by the horns, to totally trash a metaphor.

My boyfriend (now hubby) was down visiting over the summer, and we wanted to go visit my bestie. I knew where she lived, sorta. From the highway I could easily find her house, but Mom didn't want me taking that route. It was dangerous under normal driving conditions, and turning left at that road is scary on a good day. For a newbie driver? To channel my inner New Yawker, fuhgeddaboutit!

Back roads it is. It's what we've got around here, a veritable plethora of back roads.

I knew most of the route, but Mom gave me step-by-step directions, as we do – with this gem: “Turn left at the house that used to be a one-room school house.”

Now, I darn well KNOW what one-room school houses bleeping well look like. I passed two today, just going to the local pharmacy. So when I and boyfriend set out on our festive “swaree” with precious directions clutched in hand, do you think we found that house??

Nope. Right out to the scary highway, and I had to make that screaming left-hand turn to land. In a '68 Dodge Dart. Which does NOT live up to its name, rest assured.

Also rest assured I snarled at Mom about it afterwards. She knew better! Pop did it to her! How could she do it to me?!?

Her answer??

“Well, all you had to do was look at the foundation!”

What. The. Bleeping. Bleepy. Bleep???

Yeah, sure. THE FOUNDATION!?! AT NIGHT?? In a car I'm driving, trying to see all directions, all at once? And with a co-pilot that didn't know back road anything if you hit him over the head with a soybean plant??

No. Just, no.

So, you'd think I learned my lesson, right?

Sigh. Wouldn't be much of a story if I had...

I grow up, marry said boyfriend, move an hour away from both kith and kin. Pearl clutchers, please form a line on the right, vaporers waiting for the fainting couch, please form an orderly line on the left.

I make friends. We decide to hold a birthday party at a somewhat-local restaurant.

It's back-road adjacent. Can't mix up these directions, can I?

The town's name is Ono. The local convenience store was the O'Yes in Ono.

And it closed.

But the signs are still up! And the restaurant's sign right beyond is huge and lit up, no way to miss it, right?

Yeah.

Everyone came to the party From The Far Side Of Town. Past the only stop light in the area, where turning around is a bleep, and the town's only a few yards long.

I heard about that one for a long time when people came dragging in, exhausted from the “country turn around” they were forced to perform.

At least the curse is broken now, right?

The restaurant burned down a few years back. Sign's gone, place leveled.

It's a field now. Nice, green, waving grass.

Don't turn left there.