I once was lost, but now … I’m still lost

I got lost coming home from the bar last Saturday night. I hadn’t been drinking, no, I’d been working with my little weekend band, The Guinness Brothers (which, admittedly, is named for the beer; but no, again, I swear, I hadn’t had any beer myself).

The club was one we’ve played dozens of times over the years, less than an hour’s drive from my house. I’m almost sure I know how to get there without the GPS, but after all this time, I still don’t quite trust myself to do so.

Which is why it’s odd I left the club without programming my return route into the directional gadget. I guess for once I was feeling fairly confident I could find my way home on my own.

I couldn’t. Two hours later, I realized I was in Cadillac. Somewhere along the line, I’d started daydreaming and had gone the exact opposite direction from where I wanted to be. I pulled to the side of the road and punched my own address into the GPS.

Thus guided, I finally rolled in to my driveway around 5 a.m.

I wish I could say this was an unusual occurrence. It’s not. I’ve been directionally handicapped since birth.

As a kid, I would get lost walking the six blocks home from school. It was so common my mother stopped worrying about me when I was late. If I still wasn’t home an hour after school let out, she’d stop what she was doing and drive around the neighborhood until she found me. More often than not, I wasn’t even aware I was lost.

This problem followed me into my teen years, where I spent a couple summers hitch-hiking around the country. Never knowing for sure just where you are or where you’re going can make for some interesting travels. Phoenix, Independence, Chicago and Tulsa are all cities I’ve seen by accident, because I turned left when I meant to turn right, or vice-versa.

At 17, accompanied by my girlfriend Dianne, I left a church camp near Kalamazoo and drove all the way to Indianapolis before I realized I was not headed toward Grand Rapids, where Dianne (and her father, the grim-eyed pastor) lived. The old man was neither amused, nor inclined to believe my stuttering explanation when his daughter and I pulled into his driveway around sunup the following morning.

As an adult, most of my geographical miscalculations have resulted in only minor inconveniences. Sometimes, especially when I’m out late at night, I’ll accidentally drive “home” to a house I’ve not lived at in years. That’s happened a couple times.

In recent years, I guess my worst directional faux pas happened after I’d gone to Lansing, where I interviewed then-Governor Jennifer Granholm. As a rule, I dislike covering politics, but there was a free lunch involved.

Miraculously, I found my way there just fine, despite the fact driving in Lansing provides an experience almost identical to that of being a blind mouse in a particularly complex maze, one with no cheese at the other end.

It wasn’t until the drive home that things got dicey. It was a beautiful, autumn afternoon; the sun was shining, the sugar maples ablaze with color, the roads clear of heavy traffic. The perfect day for a quiet drive back to Big Rapids.

I didn’t realize I’d gone off course until I began seeing signs informing me that the Mackinac Bridge was coming up in a mile or so.

My editor, who was almost as used to me getting lost as my mom had been decades earlier, let me file the story from a McDonald’s in Mackinaw City, rather than try to make it back to the paper before deadline.

I’m pretty sure I had a point for this column when I started writing it, or some punch-line … something. But somehow, it has gotten lost along the way.

Mike Taylor’s book, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is available in eBook format at Amazon and in paperback from Robbins Book List in Greenville. mtaylor325@gmail.com