Do you have a good sense of direction?
I have the uncanny ability to get lost. If I have to choose between a right or left turn I will always choose the wrong way. My husband is completely opposite, I swear he has GPS in his head and can even find his way around new cities easily. I'm wondering if this is a gender thing?
by
ohcheri
asked 6 months ago
I have no problem finding my way outside, but I get lost in buildings. Absolutely no sense of direction inside.
We are the opposite. My husband can get confused just on a short walk from point A to point B. I usually am able to keep us on track.
I think it might be because I pay more attention to our surroundings than he does. His concern is typically to get there, get what we want, and get out/back home.
No problem finding my way around, even in new areas mostly.
My wife's parents, on the other hand, come from an area with a mountain range nearby so they have no problem with directions at home. Get them some place that's flat, unless they're driving into the sun at sunup or sundown it's not so good.
I can get lost in a walk-in closet.
I agree with @katblue on the inside of buildings, especially my doctor's building with 12 doctors' offices, which has all kinds of small hallways and directions. Outside I have no problem at all. If I can see the Rockies, that's west, at least when I'm on the front range.
I forgot to mention in my previous post that my wife doesn't share their sense of direction.
@ohcheri: I don't think it's a gender thing, but it may have a genetic component. I have a strong sense of direction when outside, and if there are windows, I am good inside buildings too. I have problems in shopping malls, but that's more to do with the distractions and way too many people than with being inside, I suspect.
I can tell which direction I am facing even when blindfolded.
It may also have to do with my spending time in rural and semi-rural locations (where knowing which way you are walking can mean the difference between going hungry for a few days or making it back home). My daughter shares this characteristic with me (to provide two data points against the gender-based idea).
@thebopster: If I can see the Rockies, that's east. You must be lost. ;-}
@kophia: I think this is at least part of my problem. I tend to daydream and let me husband lead us on walks. He does most of the driving, too, and if I'm not driving I don't pay attention to where we're going. There have been times when I've asked him how to get somewhere that we've been several times.
I read maps for fun when I was a kid, so yeah, on the streets I have no issues.
Malls and office buildings, not much of a problem.
Large parking lots, OTOH ... yeah, we've gotten lost too many times.
@mtm2: Interesting...I am the complete opposite. Spent most of my adult life in central CA and I could still get lost even in the town I grew up in! No sense of direction whatsoever...
We moved to Oklahoma and I always know exactly which way I am going. I know without a doubt that you could blindfold me, dump me out in the boonies and I could find my way home easily. Also lost my General Anxiety Disorder when we got here...I think it has something to do with the wide open spaces. :-)
Inside I get lost in very large and many floored buildings. Outside I'm fine, but don't ask directions of me. I know where I'm going, but most times I couldn't tell you the names of the roads. I can give directions mostly by landmarks, like... go 4 miles and turn left where the red barn burned down 14 years ago, and then I'll give a REAL landmark or some other feature that really stuck out to me.
@narfcake: Funny parking lot story: I went on vacation and rented a car. First stop was to meet a friend at a local mall and the plan was for her to get in my car and continue with our day. I not only forgot where I parked the rental car, I also couldn't remember what the car looked like! We spent 10+ minutes walking around clicking the electronic key until I found the car.
In a new location, give me one landmark or main thoroughfare to orient by, and I'll find my way around just fine from then on. Or if I see the sun rise or set once, I know where north is from then on and can get around without getting lost.
I remember when a friend and I drove to Tucson for a vacation many years ago - whenever I let her try to find our way around, we would get completely lost. When she would let me drive, I went straight to our destination, even at night.
Fairly good, as I have good spatial memory (for want of a better term).
Though also I think it comes from being prepared and knowing my surroundings whenever possible. For example, even though I have and use the GPS on one of my phones, I tend to go through the entire route on a map before getting started and (almost unconsciously) make note of alternate routes. This probably goes back to years ago when I used paper maps.
I used to collect detailed street atlases for areas that I'd visited (eg. Chicago, Orlando, all of New York State), though I haven't done this for the last few years (after most of the collection was damaged or destroyed in a flooded basement shortly after moving to my condo).
My family would joke that I could get lost going around a corner, btw, which has happened. Before cell phones I needed, and I mean needed to carry change for the phones, so that I could call someone for help sigh . Initially my husband thought it was just a little family ribbing, when he realized it was not a joke, he started teaching our children at the age of two, how to read a map, lol.
@meems212: My husband also thought I was joking about my bad sense of direction but after 10 years he finally gets it. I'm pretty good at reading a map, though, and collect maps and atlases.
yep, male.
navigate very well hiking or driving.
traveled the world, ans as long as I have a landmark (like the sun) I can get around. Freaked my wife an brother that I could fly into Frankfurt am Main and show up on his doorstep with nothing but an address. (story predates GPS)
Worked a job that required traveling all over the US. As long as streets don't curl around in circles I do great.
However, I have no clothing sense. I look like a train wreck without guidance.
Sometimes I'll go driving around and make random turns just to try to get lost. It never happens.
I've rented cars in Denver, Las Vegas and Miami and had no problems finding my way around (although at first Miami was a little annoying).
Drove to Memphis, Gulf Shores Alabama, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati and had no problems there either. I even managed to find my sister's house in Cincinnati after being given really bad (and wrong) directions. Ran into traffic when leaving town there and managed to find and take an alternate route around the traffic.
Needless to say my significant other was quite impressed!
I laugh and make fun of people who use GPS. GPS in itself isn't the problem it's when people blindly follow it! I'm lucky if I even have a map!
In buildings I do sometimes get a little lost but I always find my way. Especially at first in the large hospital my dad is at quite frequently.
I'd love to just get lost somewhere and make an adventure out of it but I can't!
I've always had a good sense of direction, but have absolutely no idea which way is North. I know that to get where I'm going I need to take two lefts, a right, then a left, but if you start giving me "turn northwest, then southeast" I'm instantly lost.
@tpscan: Same here. Give me a landmark and I'll get you where you're going.
I have a great sense of direction. I may not always know where I'm at but I always know where I came from and how to get where I'm going.
Also I can always tell you which way is North.
When I first got my license (years ago) I would purposfully get myself lost and then find my way back. The benefits of being a kid with time to kill.
I know how to get to TONS of places, but only if I go home first. Seriously, I'm ok with places right around my house, but don't ask me to go from home to point A to point B. I have to go home first.
My husband has a great sense of direction, but at age 43 he doesn't know his left from his right. Seriously. He's a brilliant man. But he's also left-handed. And every time you say left, he turns right.
I'm pretty good when driving, but put me in the woods without either a GPS or a map and compass, and I'm hopeless.
I once got lost less than 100 feet from my own tent.
@shrdlu: I'm on the right side (East) of the Rockies for me. I think it's you who is lost. ;)
@shrdlu: I should have said WE are on the right side. TheBopster is at work, so I answered for him, and he's going to take me into the mountains and get me lost when he finds out.
@misterron: If you're east of the Rockies, you're clearly on the wrong side. I am east of the Cascades, but west of most everything else. I have lived near some sort of mountains all my life; I can't imagine it otherwise.
Rockies are far away, for me.
@shrdlu: Got it. We are on the front range (East side) of the Rockies in Colorado, very close to the Wyoming border.
IMO, I no longer have a sense of direction only because the Maps app on my iPhone is so convenient and I have adapted to it over the years. I've grown quite lazy... now all I have to do is put in an address and not worry about going the wrong way. Without my phone, I will be forever lost.
I have a semi-decent sense of direction and always scored well on spatial reasoning. (Maybe because I'm a bit spatial?) In general, my sense of geography stinks though. There is one mall that whenever I go to it, no matter which route I take to get there, I always take the wrong turn right before I get there.
I was proud of myself because I pretty much mastered the Seoul subway system when we visited South Korea in September. (Thank God for subway maps and signs in English!) Please keep in mind that I live in a state that has no subway system anywhere in it, and prior to the trip to SK, I'd only ridden Chicago's El twice.
I used to have an outstanding sense of direction and never get lost. Then we got a navigator. Now I get lost because I stopped paying attention to directions.
I used to be horrible at directions. Then I became a school bus driver so I had to learn quickly how to follow directions to get to all the stops
I'm like a homing pigeon. IIf I glance at a map of the area I'm going, I can generally get there without too much trouble.
I can find my way around anywhere, except at a large dept store at the mall. Macy's is pure torture for me, I almost always end up exiting through a different door than the one I entered through. The mall itself, no problem. But the anchors are enough to drive me batty (with of course Sears being the one exception).
Hell no. That's what GPS is for. :D
Of course, I never leave the dark basement of home because real contact with people is just too scary.
With my GPS I (almost) never get lost!
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