It’s a bit of a boy thing, this reading maps.
And when I think about it, I suppose it has to start somewhere. It may even have started, in the case of my husband, with his grandfather showing him a landmark or two on a tourist map.
My head is mostly in the clouds but my husband is never more content than when he is looking at a map, fingers pointing, brows furrowed, mouth upturned at the edges. He doesn’t need to turn the map around like I do, reading it upside down or from the side so myself and the direction are directly aligned.
He just seems to scan it and know. It doesn’t take much, a quick shake of the map, a flurry of important finger pointing and then he folds the map and puts it away, his ability to drive directly to the destination secure.
Mine is a different story. Mine is about confusion and sighing and driving around round-abouts a few times, uncertain of the correct exit and often finding myself kilometres from where I thought I was going.
We used to drive to Melbourne at Christmas time to see our grand parents and Dad would issue us with strip maps, courtesy of the RACQ. The map was primarily a single road connecting, say Parkes and Forbes, with Parkes at one end and Forbes at the other. You drove along that road and voila, you were a bit closer to your destination. I thought at the time that there was just one road leading the Melbourne and we were on it.
But I digress. Because this column isn’t about my severe map malaise, but more about the birth of a new generation of map readers.
It was a small thing and the cloud watcher in me could have missed it, but I didn’t and the moment warmed my heart. We were at the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, a family treat for a one-year-old’s birthday. The three-year-old cousin spent most of the day riding in style in his stroller (grandma was a bit jealous), pointing at things on the map. Several times he asked where something was and several times, he and his grandfather pored over the map checking out locations.
And that’s when I knew. This boy was going to be a map reader too. This boy gets pleasure in figuring these things out. A new generation has started. I think I might map that moment.
