If you ask my spousal unit how to get somewhere you will get a matter-of-fact recitation of road names, distances and compass type directions in which to turn.

If you ask me how to get somewhere, this is what you will get:

"Um well you go the gas station, I think it's a Texaco ... wait, maybe it's an Esso. And you turn right, I mean you turn right if you're coming from the direction of the grocery store. And you drive quite a ways, you have to go past the place with the plastic flamingoes in the yard. You'll hit a corner and there's a low blue house, you turn right and it's just a few places down. You can't miss it."

Yes, Paul and I do take a different approach to driving.

The fact I navigate by landmarks is a source of endless hilarity for the hubber. "But Marn, what if they paint the house another colour?" he asked me once.

Geez, does the guy have eyes on the back of his head or something? I mean, I was only lost about 20 minutes the time that happened. When I spotted the other house, the one with the cement deer in the yard, I knew where I was.

Part of the problem here is that I grew up in southwestern Ontario which is very, very flat and so the roads are pretty much in perfect grids. My dad used to tell me that if I got lost it would only take me three right turns to get back to the beginning of my route. Never had to try it, motoring around was simple.

Well now I live in a mountainous part of southern Quebec with twisty country roads, no grids here. Get lost, take three turns to the right, and heck ... a person could end up in Vermont. I would be speaking theoretically, of course.

Our kid does not seem to have picked up my directional impairment, she scoots around Montreal with ease. When the two of us head off somewhere new in The Big City, I always feel a bit like Lewis and Clark.

I play the role of the two clueless white guys--hey, I'm nothing if not versatile--and Jesspoo plays the role of the native woman who actually knows where she is going and gets the two clueless white guys there. Works for me.

Now picture this: our most recent visit in Montreal, Paul and I are taking an unfamiliar bus back from downtown to the kid's place where we're gonna pick up our car.

She Who Navigates By Landmarks sees up ahead in the distance a bus shelter with an unusual ad beside it and a bank machine nearby. Landmarks. "We get off up there," I mention casually.

"No, we have to get off at Cavendish," says Paul in a tone usually used to explain things to the learning impaired or very young children. Fine.

But deep, deep in my heart I know I am right. Landmarks. I repeat that I think we get off up ahead. He just rolls his eyes. Fine.

Okay, time out. If you have to get somewhere and you have to choose between Paul and I to get you there, even *I* will tell you to pick the guy in this picture. 999 out of 1,000 times he will be right.

But this, *this* is that 1,000th time, the 0.001 time that directionally-challenged Marn is right and BY GOD I'M GOING TO ENSHRINE IT FOREVER AT DIARYLAND.

You're right, I have no life. Can we move along now?

So cue camera, roll tape, and ... a few stops later we're at the bus shelter with the ad and the bank machine I remembered, and sure enough the road sign up above it says Cavendish.

Yesssssssssss. This is the place where we have to get off. I'm right.

Oh alright. Picky, picky, picky. Technically, we were both right, BUT he used that snippy tone with me AND he rolled his eyes.

Under the "mock me and prepare to suffer endless humiliation if you're wrong" rule (look it up, you'll see) I am now officially more right than he.

I could have rubbed it in, but I took the high road. I didn't say a word.

But then, I figure my smirk said it all.