the one universal experience of my generation, the one thing that binds us all together, is trying to get an address out of someone my dad's age
"you need to head left onto main"
"i just need an address"
"18 furlongs that way, turn north"
"i just need an address and i don't know which way north is"
"after that just head straight until you feel a deep sense of inexplicable longing, then left again"
"i just need an address"
back when a car gps was A Device that you had to Have One Of, i watched my dad give tortured directions to someone who was holding their gps in their hands and staring at the "enter the address" screen. and it wasn't that he didn't know it, at the end he said "and then you get to [street name] and it's number X"
"holly this is a joke you stole from xkcd" this is a joke that has been made many times because it's a universal experience
sometimes my dad asks me where i'm going so i tell him the address and he immediately goes "oh you're going to want to head--" dad. the only reason i know the address is because i already have the directions pulled up
i've actually had to start interrupting him to say "you know i've already forgotten the first instruction you said" and he goes "yeah, i know" and stops
@monorail somehow he manages to a) personalize them ("this is near the place where we went last month") an b) simplify them so I can remember all of them (granted, they were biking directions in a small-ish city)
@noiob my sense of direction is so bad that even dad directions can't help. i need a computer to tell me exactly when to take every turn