Directionally Challenged

My husband and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary this week.  It does feels like quite an accomplishment that we are still together after so many years.  It's not that we aren't compatible or don't get along, in fact, we make a pretty good team.  We complement each other's idiosyncrasies quite well.

"Misty Way" photo courtesy of Hornpipe

One of us likes to spend money, the other is a saver.  One of us has what some people would classify as a fiery temper (ahem, I think that may be a bit of an exaggeration on their part), the other stays calm, cool, and collected.

He doesn't like cake icing and I do, so he gives me all of his.   He doesn't like chocolate either, and gives me all of that as well.  That last act alone qualifies him for sainthood.  

I like to shop around for the best price on things we need.  He likes for me to shop around for the best bargain.  Once I find the bargain, he goes and purchases said item.  It's like having Amazon Prime living in my own house.

Even with all of the many wonderful ways we work together, there is still one area we struggle with:  navigation.  My husband seems to have been born without an internal compass, and he can't follow a mechanical one either.

When I tell him to head east, he'll head west, or south, or any direction except east.  If I tell him to take the 3rd street on the right, he'll turn at the 5th street on the left.

Even when he uses the map feature on his phone, he gets north/south/east/west all mixed up.  He argues with the turn-by-turn navigation on our GPS as it calls out which way to go or what lane to be in.

If he goes the wrong way from what the GPS is coordinated for, he'll yell at the GPS to hush up.  The GPS will then give elaborate directions on where to make a U-turn to get back on the correct path.

My husband has no appreciation for this feature and tells it to recalculate because he doesn't make U-turns.  After a couple of miles, you can almost hear the GPS sigh in frustration as it says "recalculating..........".

Just recently I was heading south on a highway and my husband was giving me directions.  He was absolutely sure we were headed north.  Thankfully I was born with an internal compass and knew that we were headed south.

Had I not of known where we were going, we might have driven all the way to the Texas-Mexico border.  Should that have happened, I would almost bet money he would have asked why Mexico was where Canada is supposed to be.

Even with this strange quirk, he has always been able to find his way home every single day.  After 25 years together, I guess there are worse quirks to have........

Written by Christie Bielss