I was a stressed kid all through school. One thing stress does is it screws with your mind... or, in my case, my memory. I think certain parts of my brain remain severly underdeveloped because of that stress.
Like the part of my brain that keeps track of maps.
I'm actually really good at reading maps, following maps, and even remembering maps to places. Assuming I've had three trips where I've had to navigate to a place, I'll have it pretty well locked down in my memory for a while. I'm useless, though, as a passenger. We could fly to the moon and I wouldn't notice until we got there.
But that's neither here nor there.
I got lost easily as a kid, and I still have some challenges that way as an adult.
I remember that I could barely find my way to school in Washington except by following the ant-trail of other kids. Today, I have no real concept of the spatial placement of my Washington school (that I went to for two or three years) and my Washinton home.
Some of my unpleasant dreams feature me not being able to find places (my classroom, my locker, whatever), and sadly these dreams are not just anxiety dreams but are anchored in reality.
I walked to a friend's house once, where we sat around and read ghost stories to each other. Walking home (in the dark) I had no idea where I was. I had to give up and use the phone at a stranger's house to call my dad. I don't think I was that far away, either!
Thinking back, I have no memory where things were -- I have no idea how I navigated from place to place as a kid. I'm sure it can't be as bad as I remember it, but truly, I remember the locations in my past as destinations floating in space with no memory of the paths that led between them.
I still have this problem. I can remember the place but not the path. If I visit a place often enough, its context "bleeds" and can connect with the context of another place... creating a path of fuzzy place blobs.