Bob forwarded me a news story about a Guyanese guy who got lost in Queens for five days. I know Queens can be confusing, but…really?! Five days?

Damon Mootoo had just arrived in the U.S. for the first time, and went out for a walk, and then apparently got disoriented. He wound up subsisting on nothing but begged water until some guy saw him huddled in a corner, shivering (yes, the weather finally got cold here), and took him home.

I know, this does not look good for the boosters of the Queens street-numbering system, such as myself. Everyone from elsewhere complains about it, but I think it makes perfect sense.

But some crucial detail must be missing from the whole story. There are some factors that account for his getting lost, but not enough. It’s true, according to the story, Mootoo can’t hear so well. I suppose he could’ve been feeling discombobulated after his long flight from Guyana–although I don’t think there’s much of a time change, if any, so he shouldn’t have been too wigged out.

And he had apparently heard so many horrible stories about New York City that he was afraid to ask anyone for directions, lest he get attacked or deported. This is truly awful. (It also leads me to a side harangue about guidebooks that are chock-full of warnings about crime, scams, leering men, terrible pestilence, etc., etc. By the time you’re done reading, you’ve decided to just eat dinner in the hotel cafe–but inside, where the pickpockets can’t get you.)

But the guy does speak English. And he actually did have the address of his brother’s house in his pocket. So how on earth did this happen?

Either Mootoo really is one sandwich short of a picnic, and the reporters are too polite to mention it….

Or I suppose it really could be that when he stepped outside and saw himself at the corner of 152nd Street and 123rd Avenue, all his synapses just fried at the sight of so many numerals. Then it was all he could do to find an abandoned car to crawl into and rock quietly until the numbers in his head stopped dancing, and dancing, and dancing.

Clearly, if you are opening your home in Queens to any foreigner, whether it’s a Brooklynite or a deaf Guyanese man, your very first responsibility is to teach them The Poem:

In Queens to find locations best —
Avenues, roads and drives run west;
But ways to north or south, ‘tis plain
Are streets or place or even lane;
While even numbers you will meet
Upon the west and south of street.

Peter and I made sure Bob learned it, and he managed just fine, even though we live dangerously near the paralyzing confluence of 30th Avenue, 30th Road and 30th Street.