Lost

I had to run up to Four Points to drop off a check at our insurance agent's office, and since I was halfway there, we continued up to my sister-in-law Christina's house. I had the hardest time getting there, though, because I couldn't find any of the streets. Keep in mind, I lived in this area for FIFTEEN YEARS. I learned how to navigate, and then to drive, on these roads. But there's been so much new construction in the last three years that NOTHING looked the same. You don't know what a major problem that is for me, if you don't know how my mental maps work. You see, about a year and a half ago, Jonathan took a class during which he needed a few people to draw out their mental maps for him. He got one from my nephew Michael, who was 10 or 11 at the time; he got one from our 35-year-old neighbor who takes the bus most anywhere he needs to go--we give him rides to church; and he drew one himself. It made me evaluate my own, too, and I realized that just how visual I am. I'm very good with maps, but I know where I am by the "texture" of the architecture around me--the ages, sizes, styles, colors, and uses of the buildings, but not necessarily the buildings themselves--and overlay *that* with the usual street map. And now, there I was on the streets I grew up on, and I couldn't get the "texture" to line up with the map. I was totally lost on a road I had literally driven a thousand times before.