[Author’s note; This column was written before GPS guidance systems replaced hastily scribbled hand-written directions on the back of a napkin as the primary way to get from where you are to where you want to be.]

Does this sound familiar to you? Distant friends call and say they’ll be in your area and want to visit. They ask for directions. Now, if I happen to be the one taking the call, I provide actual directions, including street names, approximate driving distances and helpful landmarks such as “the second off-ramp,” “third stoplight” or “fourth driveway on the left,” etc. But if the woman who is my wife is the one answering the poor caller gets plenty of information, but little of it will be useful in locating our house.

I certainly don’t mean to single Wendy out. Giving unhelpful directions is only one of her many charming qualities. I know many people who are graduates of the same school of giving directions, which I call The Misdirection Academy. Most of those grads start off by offering cardinal point-based directions, such as “we’re a mile north of Walt’s” or “two miles west of Eagle Harbor.” That may make perfect sense to a friend who is already a resident of Bainbridge Island, but such directions can be problematic for a nonresident unless that person (a) happens to be in a car with a compass; (b) happens to be at Walt’s or Eagle Harbor; or (c) there happens to be a locatable, drivable road leading north from Walt’s or west from Eagle Harbor.

Misdirection Academy graduates refuse to use actual street names, preferring to call things “the main drag” or “the two-lane road that goes through the woods off to your left.” Things really break down when academy grads try to use landmarks. Wendy and her ilk are prone to advising someone looking for our house to “turn left at the corner with the pretty yellow house with the cute blue awning,” or “go past the house with the bed of crocuses in the front yard and the black lab in the back until you come to the brown Colonial where you’ll veer south.” Most of my distant friends wouldn’t know a crocus from a dog’s elbow and think a “Colonial” is a golf tournament.

Another thing academy graduates do is offer alternative driving directions to the same place, as in: “you can either take 305 to the street where the animal hospital is, turn right and head south until you pass the Thai restaurant, or you can take 305 to that Sports Road and turn west past Lauren’s school and Mary’s church and then turn right at St. Bartholomew’s, or you can go all the way to the McDonald’s and turn right and go past the High School.”

Speaking as a driver who is occasionally interested in getting from a known point to an unknown place I don’t find alternative route information particularly helpful. I’d rather be given just one way to go even if it means I may hit traffic, recognizing that, with the exception of the ferry schedule, “hitting traffic” means having to wait for three cars instead of two.

If time permits, I often draw a sketch of BI and mail or fax it to potential visitors, with the location of our house and the best and simplest route for getting there highlighted. Wendy sometimes does the same, except that her maps are densely annotated with important information such as her favorite clothing shops, good restaurants, the homes of friends and other points of interest along the way or worthy of a side trip.

All of that is fascinating, but hardly necessary to someone whose modest goal is to get to our house as quickly and painlessly as possible.

I always write our address and telephone number on my maps. Wendy provides that plus her work number, one or two cell numbers, her work schedule, a couple of e-mail addresses, and the telephone numbers of several friends who might know where she is if she isn’t at any of the half dozen numbers she has provided.

Wendy also offers tips on parking in the unlikely event that a poor pilgrim using one of her maps actually arrives at the desired destination. Wendy’s sketches are often more like bizarre social and cultural artifacts than maps, but then, for academy graduates, it is all about the journey rather than the destination. And sometimes, you really just can’t get here from there.

Tom Tyner of Bainbridge Island writes a weekly humor column for this newspaper.