Hate Maps
I hate maps. I will always hate maps. As long as there are maps in the world that exist only to torment the people of this world, I will hate maps with a vengeance!
I can’t really see how the most stupid invention in the world—the maddening and ludicrous ‘folding map which can not be folded back up again without taking time off work and the help of an experienced psychologist—came to be. At one point in time, presumably in the early stages of R & D, there must have been enough people in one room to put their heads together and say “you know what Steve? This idea really sucks, and you want to know why?”
“I think I already know why–” Steve might say.
And there we have it. The plan to saturate the world with difficult-to-fold-back-up, crap-to-hold-in-the-wind-while-lost maps would have been ditched there and then. Steve would probably have lost his job and gone on to do another less taxing job (anything else I would imagine), and the world would instead have been saturated with easy-to-fold-excellent-to-read-while-lost maps.
Except Steve (or whoever it was, it may have been Margerie or Jill) went on to have head-scratchingly immense success, and the folding map became a main-stay, a part-player in divorces, no doubt, and the collapse of a large number of countries. If only things would have been different! There would have been less depression in the world, less fights at the wheel which ended up in tragedy, and more smiles all round. Sometimes folding maps get me really mad and I just have to vent–
The one benefit of hating maps is this: I have grown so used to hating them that the practice of pouring my heart and soul in to this somewhat negative activity is quite cathartic. I need to hate maps, you see. It makes the rest of everything I do seem magical and great, even if it’s cleaning the toilet!
Finally, I need to have a little bit of a gloat. I have just bought the most gratifying mizuno running shoes that I have ever owned. Parks Marathon, here I come!