Who knew I was geographically challenged?

When you live in Dallas all your life, compass directions are pretty easy. Mexico is south, almost all of the US is north, and "East Coast" and "West Coast" make sense because that's what direction you go to get there. When you move to the East Coast, your perspective has to change. I just told a friend, who wanted to know where Farmington was within the state of Maine, that I was 2 hours north and east of Portland. Later, I realized, "You can't be east of Portland . . . that would put you in the Atlantic Ocean!" But how can anything in Maine be "west" when all of Maine was "east" for your whole life?

Lindsay, this is why I make so many u-turns when we travel together on the East Coast. It's especially weird when I'm on Long Island and
I want to go to New York City. There's no way on the map in my head that New York City can be "west" of anything! But it is, in fact, west of Long Island.