I want to share a touching love story with you in honour of Valentine’s Day. It’s not the usual Valentine’s Day mushy stuff. It’s a love story tucked into an anecdote about what happens when a directionally challenged person navigates. That person would be me.

My then-boyfriend and I had been dating for a short time when another church College and Careers group member invited several of us to his home for a pizza party. It must have been love because that boyfriend eventually married me despite the unfortunate circumstances we encountered finding that house.

For context, knowing that North is always straight ahead when reading a map is important. If this is new information to you, look at a map. North is always at the top; hence, it must be straight ahead.

From the meagre bit of information you have now acquired, you might have assessed two things. One, there is trouble ahead. Two, if I were engaged in orienteering, it could become a death sentence.

The party was in the suburbs in a part of Toronto unfamiliar to us. The lovely young man I was dating resided in a different city region. I lived in an apartment in downtown Toronto, worked across the street, and travelled to church, and anywhere else I needed to go, either on foot or by public transit. As a relatively new resident of Toronto, my knowledge of the city was limited, and the only area I did know was downtown. Being directionally challenged, it was tough when someone told me to go West or East when I came up from the subway. What on earth did that mean? And no, you couldn’t always see the CN Tower to collect your bearings.

As we headed to the party that evening, my boyfriend handed me the handwritten map our friend had drawn and informed me I was navigating while he drove. He hadn’t yet discovered that I was directionally challenged; consequently, he didn’t know the danger he/we faced by asking such a person, me, to navigate. That was about to change.

It was dark outside, and we both struggled to read the street signs while manoeuvring through traffic on the four-lane street. We waited in the centre lane for the light to change because I had told the unsuspecting driver we needed to turn left at the next intersection. Just as the light changed to green, the error of my ways dawned on me, and I spun the map 180^o and announced that we needed to turn right at this intersection.

All was not sunshine and roses. Do I need to explain that this is not an unexpected response when a directionally challenged person navigates? Does it sound like a love story yet?

We eventually arrived at the party and had a great time. About a year and a half later, that boyfriend proposed; I accepted, and several months later, we married.

Has he let me navigate since then? Ask him about our trip across Vermont when I was pregnant with our first child. I’m sure he’d be delighted to share it with you. He is still happy to invoke the pizza-party tale when the topic of map-reading arises in conversation.

We survived that hiccup and have been married for almost forty-two years, so it is a love story. However, he now knows what happens when a directionally challenged person navigates. That wise man has since bought us a car with a GPS. That’s true love.

The ever-helpful internet has instructions on how to read a map. Here is a quick tutorial if you want to brush up: https://www.wikihow.com/Read-a-Map. I missed the second point! What did we do before the internet? See the story above.