At 01:30 PM today, I finished the last portion of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Student Orien­tation Advising and Registration process by completing my enrollment in classes for the first semester of my freshman year in college.

As I was heading out of the building, I lost my way to the front exit and took a side door exit, stepping into the rain. After being unable to find my place on the map I was using, I started walking toward where I saw a bunch of cars driving by and started spinning my map around to try to orient it to the direction in which I was walking.

A short distance away, an old man with a cane standing at the corner of an intersection asked me if I needed any help. I told him that I was fine and thanked him for the offer, but he helped me out anyway and reached for my map. After staring closely at it for a few seconds, he returned my map and pointed behind me, proudly declaring, "North is that-a way." I had a strong feeling that he was pointing south and that north was in front of me, but the old man insisted that north was behind me. He cited that he has lived in this area for decades, and he knows it like "the back of [his] palm." I thanked him for his (unwelcome) help, turned to my left, and started walking east (east according to the old man, at least).

I walked and walked but couldn’t find the street I was looking for. I looked on my map for the streets I was walking past, but I couldn’t find any of them. After about a mile and a half of walking, I concluded that I had walked outside of the range of my one-page map printout, and decided to retrace my steps.

After another one and a half miles or so of walking, I made it back to the spot where I found the old man, and surprisingly, he was still there, standing in the rain. I confronted him again, pointed south, and said, "You said that that was north!" The old man pointed behind me and said, "No, I said that north was behind you!"

The thing is, when I first conversed with the old man, I was facing the real north and the old man was facing the real south. However, during the second conversation with the old man, I was facing the real south and he was facing the real north, effectively making the direction behind me north. Basically, we had switched spots during the second conversation, so his "North is behind you" statement was false during the first conversation, but actually true during the second conversation. I tried to explain this to him, but he responded by asking me if I was under the influence of chemical substances. I decided to leave him there to continue getting drenched in the rain and proceeded on my way back to my dor­mitory.

By the time I reached my dormitory, I had more or less taken a shower in rainwater and my hair was dripping wet. I checked the time, and it was 2:18 PM. A walk from the registration site to my dormitory that should have taken ten minutes or so ended up taking 48 minutes.

The moral of the story: buy a compass.