Map Reading

I’ll never forget the day when a counselor called me to her office to show me my test results. “Rex,” she smiled as she mispronounced my name, “it says here that you read maps at a fifthgrade level.” In school, that would have been great…but I was 27 years old. To this day, I cannot remember why that company tested my map skills. The job required only that I file papers alphabetically by subject. Maybe I can’t read maps, but I know every single word to “The Alphabet Song.” There are many things I cannot do, and mapreading ranks near the top. One teacher advised me to “put yourself into the map,” but that only wrinkled the paper and got peanut butter on several city names. My wife quit asking me to navigate on car trips. I could always find where we were starting, and where we needed to go. I just couldn’t find the right roads to get us there. I would use a pencil to highlight my path from point A to point B, but I often confused state highways with rivers. This led to some unfortunate detours, but one good fishing trip. Another thing that confuses me are topographic maps, the ones with those little raised mountain ranges. I’m pretty sure those map mountains aren’t nearly as tall as the real ones. Many years have passed since my map test. I probably read maps even worse today. But my car’s GPS system keeps me on course. And even better, it talks to me in a soothing female voice. One of my friends talked back to that GPS map lady. He should not have done that. He’ll be lost without her.