If they'd had GPS's back when I lived in Detroit, I would have been known as, er ... the Human GPS. Or something more clever, maybe. Anyway, the point is, I had an awesome sense of direction, and could get from any point in the metropolis to any other in record time. East Grand Blvd. and Gratiot? No problem; take Warren Ave. as a shortcut. Need to get downtown at rush hour? Skip the Lodge and take Fort St. -- it's faster.
When I moved to Iowa City for graduate school, I ditched my car and became a full-time pedestrian. The IC (as I like to call it) was only about 10 square blocks, so walking everywhere presented few challenges, and I made sure to become well acquainted with Persons of Car (hi, Holly!).
I'd always believed that that little interlude forever destroyed my once formidable powers of navigation. After moving to Madison and splitting from She Who Shall Not Be Blogged About, I again assumed my role amongst our nation's motorized majority ... and proceeded to incompetently stumble around the city's streets. For the life of me, I just couldn't figure things out -- the one way streets, the diagonals, the lakes, the frustrating presence of the state capitol building right in the middle of the narrow isthmus ... I approached them with all the grace and command of Owl Eyes from The Great Gatsby (obscure enough for you?)
Recently, I was reading Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point when it suddenly dawned on me that the decline of my navigational skills was never my fault.
It's Amy's fault.
OK, bear with me....
In Chapter 5, Gladwell writes about "transactive memory," which he describes as a sort of "joint memory system" that intimate couples (and, presumably, other quantities of intimates) develop and that is "based on an understanding about who is best suited to remember what kinds of things."
Most of us remember, at one time, only a fraction of the day-to-day details and histories.... [b]ut we know, implicitly, where to go to find the answers to our questions.... Perhaps more important, when new information arises, we know who should have the responsibility for storing it.
When I met Amy, I had been avec voiture for only a short time whereas she had been driving around the city for years. I naturally deferred to her greater knowledge of the streets, and as we developed increasing intimacy, I apparently (and unconsciously) decided that it was unimportant to retain that knowledge myself given that she was around.
Since Amy had previously lived in Seattle, it naturally followed that my dependency on her for matters navigational continued after we moved here.
Hence, the title of this blog.
But, in Detroit, it's much faster to take Southfield to 12 Mile than to go up Telegraph Road no matter what anyone tells you.
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