Where am I? (check the map)

Somewhere on the Lost Highway of my youth, the idea that I was incapable of reading a map somehow got stuck to me (sorta like Cracker Jacks from the backseat of the family car), and became part of my self-identity. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that my mom, who spent part of her formative years in the South, absolutely refused to use conventional directional terms--such as "head North toward Frederick", or even "take a left onto Main Street." Oh, no. She insisted on the heartwarmingly folksy (but at times goshawful confusing) "turn after the huge oak tree", or "it's the yellow house on the right, with the blue shutters" (heaven forbid the tree gets cut down, or they decide to paint the house!)  Anyway, bless her little pea-pickin' heart (another quaint hand-me-down from the Kentucky relatives), she must have rubbed off on me. I would look at a gigantic unfolded map, just covered in squiggly lines and tiny print, and despair at ever being able to use it to actually get anywhere. (And yes, I'm...mature...enough to have used real, live, paper-and-ink map pages...that did not speak turn-by-turn instructions. I know, VERY old-school!)

That feeling of Navigational Helplessness endured through my college years. But let's face it, as a student I didn't exactly have lots of wild, far-flung adventures to find my way through (pity, that). However, a college boyfriend, a no-nonsense Yankee (somehow I chose to overlook this) utterly rejected the notion that I was map-challenged. He took it upon himself to convince me that: 1) I should not fear or avoid maps; and 2) that they could be...fun! (you can see why we got along--bit of a nerd, himself!) Long story short (yeah, like THAT ever happens), by the time I treated myself to a European Tour as a reward for surviving graduate school, I had made so much progress in my Map Therapy that I felt comfortable and confident using street guides to, say, search for the Royal Castle in Madrid, or the non-topless beaches in Nice (because making a mistake there could be extremely ugly), or the Coliseum in Rome.

Back in the States, and flush with my Continental Success, I came to the realization that on my maiden journey, I'd picked up more than precious memories and valuable experiences--I now had an incurable Travel Bug. With no more good reasons to fear the Great Unknown (aka: anything outside of Maryland), I began making plans to drive myself around the good old U.S.A., just to see what there was to see. Turns out, there was A LOT. On my first Major Solo Trek, I covered 8,300 miles in a little black Neon...a huge oval path across the country all the way to California and back...with a trusty (free) map from AAA helping me along. For three weeks, I negotiated my way through cities and across entire states, without once getting lost! After that, I made sure to get the heck outta Dodge every summer, venturing to other beautiful American locales (Colorado, Yellowstone, Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, Chicago, etc..."this land is your land, this land is my land"!) For a formerly directionally-squeamish, map-averse girl, this was a total turnaround (ha ha). I guess you could say I had finally...found myself (SORRY!)

However, I did have a point in mind when relating this rambling narrative (and it wasn't just to regale you with whimsical anecdotes about "When I was a Youngster"). This is not the End of the Story (cue suspenseful music)...stay tuned for our next installment: Map Woman meets GPS Girl...