map reading, is a spacial skill. there is some slight evidence men are slightly better at spacial skills. How ever, it is not true that being male make you good at spacial skill or that being female makes you bad.

my ex husband went from queens to putnum county (pretty much dead north) via connecticut. (most definately east. i asked him-- didn't the sun light (it was early morning) shining directy into your eyes give you a clue you were going in the wrong directions. He replied "why should it?"

this same man lost the on ramp to the queensbourgh bridge, at queens plaza. (the brigde is less than a quarter of a mile away! all you need to do is to go straight.) he went from queens to an adress in brooklyn, via the verranzano bridge! The man could not find his way out of a paper bag with out help.

my kids grew up thinking i knew how to get everywhere in creatation-- since i was always the family navigator. when i was divorced, and going to Boston for the first time, i took along my daughter, handed her the map, and said you navagate.

fortunately, i really knew the way.. but i would ask her questions. at the end of the trip (and she missed a day of school coming with me to boston) she announced, "maps are usefull" -- i was stunned! and asked her if "didn't you already know that?" and she said "no"

her experience till then (she was 16) was "local maps" of the nieghborhood made as class projects to teach maps -- as as she said, she didn't need a map for the nieghborhood, she knew where thing were, and how to get there, and large scale maps (the US, Europe, the world)

she had no idea about road maps.

Now she is a bright kid, and had traveled alot, but she missed out about road maps. i wonder how many other kids have too? and if your spacial skills are weak, and you are never exposed, and its never really taught in school, unless someone teaches you, you never learn how to use maps. Since then, she has travel thousand of miles (she has driven to New Orleans twice!) and she never gets lost!
she some times get annoyed by directions.. one set of directions to a locale in DC started at I 495-- and she quipped, "gee, i didn't know you could get to DC on the LIE" (a local road with the same designation) so she got a map, and found her way from I 495 (LIE) to I 495 (DC beltway). my son seems to have inherited his sense of direction from his father.


my other obsession