ME, MY BAGEL, A STREET CORNER

As friends worldwide can attest, my propensity for getting myself irrevocably lost borders on a party trick. However, this was surely ne’er more obvious than when I recently spent a month in New York City. To view me in my natural habitat for the lion’s share of those four weeks, one needed only to meander to the corner of 54th and 7th where I could invariably be found juggling Google Maps in one hand, a bagel dripping with cream cheese in the other; face affixed with a permanently bewildered gaze. I should also point out that any time between 2 and 4pm, my ‘smart’phone’s battery - daily tested to its limits by excessive route planning - would die, leaving me clutching a decidedly archaic PAPER map instead. In retrospect, to make my non-native status less obvious, I could’ve just scrawled ‘TOURIST’ across my forehead in neon yellow. “JAIMEE!” my male comrades would berate me at frequent intervals, “Do you even know how to read a map??” “Vaguely!” I would cry in self defense, after my fourth ‘infallible’ walking route would lead us to anywhere except our planned destination. “iPhone; you have failed me.” I would mutter at my shoes, as The Men would take over, having greater success finding our elusive SoHo eatery utilising only their innate GPS systems and the sun than me and my myriad technology put together. The only redemptive factor here is that I discovered with certainty how effective ye olde ‘little girl lost’ adage truly is in practise. I swear I fell prey to more pick up lines over four weeks’ map-toting than I ever did in the preceding four years in my hometown. Surely that’s saying something. Something like ‘beware: carrying excess copies of The Pocket Guide To Greater Manhattan will render you fair romantic game to smug locals’.

Towards the middle of the trip, I realised that restricting my daily wanderings to specific suburbs meant I could feign navigatory confidence with ease. Indeed, I must’ve done a convincing job, because by the end 'twas I being approached by rookie foreigners displaying signs of that same bagel/Google/bewildered situation I’d been victim to only weeks before. “Mi scusi! Mi scusi! How please to get to Bleecker Street??” a wry smile flickering across my face, I’d reply “Two blocks down, to the left. I can highly recommend BookMarc.” "Grazie mille! We knew you are a New Yorker!"

I didn't correct them.

Amateurs. Don’t they even know how to read a map?

(*Bagel not pictured.)