I have always prided myself on having an excellent sense of direction, especially for being a girl. Not to play into stereotypes, but most women don’t know North from South and I do. However, there is one place where all women can navigate with confidence and that is THE MALL.

I firmly believe that if you placed a woman in a mall that she had never visited before, that within a matter of 20 minutes she could tell you where almost any store is located and within an hour where all the bathrooms are. Men, however, are incapable of even finding the Macy’s in a mall after visiting it countless times. To this day when David and I approach our local mall he asks “now, where is Dillards?” as if they might have moved it from the last time we were there. How is this possible? Seriously, it is a GIANT box with a LARGE sign that says “DILLARDS” how can you not know where it is?

This is a woman’s super power. David might ask me “where is the Gap?” and without pause I answer “upstairs, on the right, across from Talbot’s”. C’mon, give me a hard one. “Where is the Bose store?” Oh, you insult me “downstairs, across from the ice arena and the kiosk that sells hermit crabs”. I don’t know why a woman might be incapable of driving across town without getting lost but can instantly know every location within a mall. Perhaps it is carried on the X chromosome, perhaps it is part of our brain function that men lack. All I know is that men cannot find anything in a mall and a woman could buy three birthday presents, return two items in less than 45 minutes and never retrace her steps. Now, if we could only use this skill to improve mankind.