Throwback Thursday: ‘The Map According to Me’ by Susan Pieters

Mrs Jones was lost. 

She pulled into a gas station and asked for a map. The young man looked at her, perplexed. 

“Don’t you have a phone?”

“I’m from out of the country,” she said. “My phone is off. Roaming charges, you know.”

“Oh.” He nodded sympathetically, suddenly on her side. “Well, there’s a paper map here, but it’s a few years old. Outdated.”

Mrs Jones was sixty-five, and she wondered what the twentiesish man would have called her if she were on his shelf. “I’ll take one anyway, thanks.”

He gave her the receipt and she asked him if he could point out where she was on the map. 

He opened it gingerly. He held it upside down.

She rotated the map and flipped it over. “Here’s a grid of Austin, but I got turned around on the freeway. I need to go to the university. Is that north or south from here?”

He looked up and out the window, as if she were asking if it was going to rain, then returned to the map. He moved his finger along the lines. “I’m not sure where we are.”