I was riding near the intersection of Broad and Cecil B. Moore after just completing a delivery to The Rad Dish (see what they did there?), a student-run co-op at Temple University, when a woman called over to me.
Because "Wide Street" just sounds weird.
Excuse me," she asked, "can you tell me if the streets go up this way?" as she pointed east.
A very ambiguous question for sure, but I knew what she meant. In what was a perfectly wasted opportunity for sarcasm, I instead opted for the truth. I said, "This is Broad Street. There is no 14th Street. 13th Street is that way, 15th Street is this way," as I pointed in the appropriate directions.
She said "Thank you so much," and walked away. I didn't think much of it, other than that "pat myself on the back" feeling we all love to have from time to time.
But then I thought, this was sort of bizarre. For one, how did she end up smack dab in the middle of North Philly without seeing which way the streets are laid out, or without seeing a map of some sort (they're all over the subways and busses)? And, with so many people owning GPS devices, Smartphones with GoogleMaps, Waze and other direction-related apps, it's not often that people ask for directions these days. Even rarer are people who can give accurate directions. Some people have absolutely no sense of direction, which I now realize could have been the reason for this encounter.
In any case, I liked giving her directions. Made me feel important. Hah.
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