Thursday, July 12, 2007

Now You've Gone Too Far

I had myself another date with Tracey. Half date. Non-date. Whatever.
There was a great amount of deliberation on who was meeting with whom, and who was to be driving. Tracey recently acquired a driver's license, as in a few days ago. Now, apparently she's been driving, illegally, for years. However, figuring that she would find it all the sweeter motoring under provincial law, I invited her to come on by. She asked for landmarks in order to locate my domicile, but my landmarks are the domicile, and other peoples' domiciles. That's about it. So, I mention CONA, we go back and forth, I toss her some street names. Turn here. If you see this, you've gone too far.
I love that description. I think that it's the most definitive aspect of good directions.
"Now, there's a butcher shop. It's called Andy's Meats. If you see that, you've gone too far." I think that it's very important to include a 'you've gone too far' parameter. Otherwise, people could drive indefinitely, looking for fire hydrants and signposts that may not even exist (because the snowplow took 'em out last February). If you don't have a 'you've gone too far', the driver will generally start to make up landmarks that are similar to what was described to them. It reaches a point where they'll assume that you were too stupid to direct properly in the first place, and will begin filling in the blanks themselves.
"Now, they said to turn up by the post office...I don't see a post office anywhere." It's worse when you're searching by yourself because you have no mediation; no one to mull over the directions with. So, when you get close to where you think you should be, you turn down the radio, and talk to yourself. "Those are mailboxes. Those might be it. Now, he said the street was Hillview and this one says Mill - what is that? Millfox? ...Millfox? Maybe he said 'Millfox' and I heard 'Hillview'."
See?
Then you head up random streets, now late for the party (that you're hypothetically looking for), browsing any house with a lot of cars parked in front of them. Meanwhile, other people may be having social functions of their own, and they could be complete strangers to you. Showing up at the wrong door is always humbling. You never tell your friends if you went to a wrong house.
"Does Gary live here?"
"Who?"
Then others in the (wrong) house get excited, thinking you're someone they actually want to see.
"Is that Booker?! Tell him to get his ass in here! Booker!"
"Nah, it's just some jerkoff at the door."
"Oh, I'm sorry," and you quickly leave. This is like a wrong number, but it's in-person, which is far more embarrassing.
However, if a 'you've gone too far' has been included, you just drive until you see that, and then turn around.
"Okay, I'm at the butchery. I've gone too far. I'd better turn around." Then, you switch all your turns in your head; left becomes right, right becomes left, and you reverse engineer where it is you're supposed to be.
Tracey didn't go too far - she couldn't have because I told her the wrong CONA location. So, all of Tracey's turns were accurate, but she kept finding inaccurate street names that didn't match my directions because I was directing her to chase geese.
Oh, and get this: My directions had Tracey saying, "He said Ridge Road, but this is South Ridge Road..."

2 comments:

trac54 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
trac54 said...

I haven't been driving illegally for years! I just have been driving with a permit, with people that have had over 4 years of experience!

That is totally legal.
But that's not to say I never break the law.

Also it wasn't called "south ridge rd" it was called like "subridge rd"

I was like..hmmm..sub? I at the point thought perhaps you had mistaken the name of the street I was supposed to go on. I really wanted to impress you and drive to your road though. God damn. I was totally thinking I could have done it.

You would have been so impressed too.

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