Quote:
Originally posted by wolf
There is an inappropriate question I've asked several of my friends ... did you lose the ability to parallel park, and develop an urge to stop for directions? (Best answer so far: "I couldn't parallel park before ...")
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Well, you're right about that one. I was never very good at parallel parking. And yet I seem to taxi airplanes with reasonable dexterity.
As for stopping for directions, I'm still resistant to that--my experience so far has been that the people who are available for such questions (gas station attendants, convenience store clerks) seldom know their local geography very well, and worse, can't be relied on to admit they don't know when they don't. I have a lifelong love of cartography and navigation; asking for directions seems like cheating somehow. Perhaps that's a rationalization, but to the extent that the resistance is gender-based, I think it is it is most likely a matter of socialization.
My daddy the preacher resisted having any other family member able to drive *his* car...only when diabetic retinopathy disabled him did my mother learn to drive. One of my big acts of adolescent rebellion was to buy a used motorcycle shortly after dropping out of college and learn to ride it on the church lawn. The very day my learner's permit arrived, I set out on a road trip to visrt my girlfriend.
In Chestertown, Maryland (a college town on the eastern shore, a distance of about 80 miles)
At night.
In the rain.
In October.
It was quite a ride, and yet I only made one wrong turn. Interestingly enough, the first leg of my "long solo cross-country", one of the rites of passage of a student pilot, followed approximately the same route as that jaunt en route to Salsbury MD. "As the crow flies" is a bit easier, though.
I'm much better about asking for help when shopping, although still not at the level of helplessness some people expect of females. I have especially enjoyed some of my encounters with Radio Shack clerks, though, whether shopping for baterries or obscure antenna parts for our amateur radio stations. It's good dirty fun to ambush them with an actual knowlege of electronics.