Do I Need a Map?

The other day, my husband had an early-morning appointment that went more quickly than he expected. He gave me a call, and since he wasn't far from where I was, we agreed to meet nearby for a quick breakfast.

He said, "Let's meet at the McDonald's on Roscoe."

I was stumped. I couldn't picture the place he meant. "On Roscoe?" I asked.

"Right. The one at the corner of Roscoe and Topanga."

Ah-ha! The reason I didn't immediately recognize the location was that I always think of it as the McDonald's on Topanga.

It's just another example of how easily communication glitches occur. I got immediate clarification, so there was no problem. But it's easy to see how, under slightly different conditions, we could have ended up at different places, each wondering why the other was so late.

Small but inconvenient misunderstandings will occasionally happen in any relationship. If the mistake isn't caught, and they end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, people get irritated and may try to assign blame. In truth, it's nobody's fault, just the natural result of being two different people who don't necessarily think exactly the same way.