My grand little adventure…
It is a very strange thing, growing up. As an 18 year-old woman, people expect me to be responsible and be able to handle myself. What they don’t realize is that despite my fair grades and quasi-professional demeanor, I am just a little girl.
Mind you, I am growing up… I don’t have peter-pan syndrome, and I don’t shirk responsibility… But I am a little naïve and I still get excited about the funniest things. To put it shortly, I am just not as grown up as I appear.
As evidence of this, I have decided to put forth today’s adventure.
But first, a little background: Everyday I travel across beautiful Lake Washington to attend college. Although the campus and its surroundings first struck me as vague, unfamiliar, and pretty scary, I have become quite at home in most of the area. I have conquered the bus routes, discovered short cuts to my classes, and found a few favorite spots off campus. But today I was presented with a challenge just as vague, unfamiliar, and scary as going to school had been at first—Downtown Seattle. I wanted to go visit my friends from Eventforce after classes were over. But it presented quite a challenge. I didn’t know off the top of my head how exactly to get there or what obstacles I should plan for.
So thus began my research. I had seen buses on campus that read “Downtown,” so I figured that it shouldn’t be too difficult. I opened up several tabs on Safari to compare different bus routes and found that many buses would work for my particular scenario. That was before school this morning. I then spent a good portion of my history lecture examining Seattle from a “google maps” point of view. I am slightly ashamed that I am SO unfamiliar with the streets of my native city. I’ve been down there several times, but someone else was always driving, someone else was always leading or pointing me in the right direction. So there I sat, taking down notes regarding the beginning of urban life in the 11th century—and staring at street names on a map such as “Denny,” “Olive,” and “Pike.”
I guess this would be a good time to explain one of my quirks. I need orientation. Fortunately, it comes fairly easy to me. I have a gift, I suppose. When I am in the mall, I can go into a store, come out of the store, and know exactly which direction I was originally heading. Nothing too exciting, but it impresses my dazed older sister. This orientation-craving also expresses itself in my mild obsession with maps. I have a map of Europe that has all the cities I want to travel to marked on it. When I went on my MC tour, I bought a map just so I would know where we were. I just love maps. And I always want to know where I am…
So, after thorough investigation, it was time to set off and get where I needed to go without much but my memory to go off of.
I successfully caught one of the right buses and within minutes I was in the Seattle bus tunnel. After ascending to the street, I started on foot to the convention center. This is where being a little girl fits back in. I was walking along the streets of Down-town Seattle and it struck me – I am still such a little girl. Not too long ago, I wasn’t allowed to leave my cul-de-sac. Now I am traipsing through the streets of a large metropolis all by myself. How did this happen? When did this happen?
I quickly (and uneventfully) arrived at the convention center, where I enjoyed seeing a few friends and frequently experiencing deja vu. After the visit was over, I was able to easily navigate myself back to the bus tunnel and catch the bus home…
Ah, what a grand little adventure. Tune in tomorrow for my next planned
