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Troubled with losing my sense of direction
By John Andre, Editor
Wed Mar 19, 2008, 12:35 PM EDT
I’ve become part of a GPS family.
The Global Positioning Satellite device now mounted in my wife's vehicle, the family vehicle, will now become our guiding light as we make road trips around New England.
The disease came into our lives when we borrowed one for a trip recently. It was my first taste of the soft, somewhat disturbing, female voice telling me when to turn and when to prepare to turn, or make a U-turn when I still couldn't follow directions as she frantically, yet calmly, recalculated our place in the universe.
The other female voice in the vehicle wasn't as soft, but just as disturbing. My wife bellowed, her pleasure pronounced in shouts of joy, comforted in knowing I would not lead her astray. She had been set free, I knew, of demanding that I stop and ask that person or this, where we were, and how to get out of where we were.
I would no longer be allowed to say "no, I can't see the map in your hands."
She called me excitedly to tell me she "bit the bullet."
The idea that I've become obsolete in missions requiring us to go where no one has gone before has left me a tad depressed.
How will I replace the exhilaration of bringing the family out of the abyss that robbed us of hours at our destination, and seeing the comfort on their faces as we make our way back onto familiar territory?
"Don't worry, Dad will get us out of this mess as soon as we find a filling station."
Ah, the memories.
All that I learned from these travels is now left at the landfill with all those 8-track tapes and empty cans of Schlitz.
Regretfully, I cannot get anyone to believe that a current map is a much more practical tool in trekking out to the unknown.
Should the device, this technology that many now can't do without, go kaput, then where are you?
Lost.
Be warned. As the soothing voice, which you can program to broadcast as female or male, even add an accent, takes down the road, you will be under the spell of this machine.
It will find the nearest restaurant, rest room, hotel gas station. Oh, the joy as you are just ".9 miles from destination."
As everyone praises the contraption, and follows its little red road, the station comes into view.
Closed.
How odd that this revelation is accepted with such glee and profound joy. What's really funny is I never seemed to draw the same reaction when I took us to an I-Hop that was suddenly converted into a Speedy Oil Change.
There was a time when being lost was a learning experience, a spiritual experience, and for some, an out-of-body experience.
My father never was worried about being lost. His motto was that all roads led somewhere. As long as you had plenty of gas, simply sit back and enjoy finding yourself.
Unfortunately I have been unable to pass this wisdom on. Seems like my crew is too much in a hurry to get somewhere, and the road I lead them on will eventually end, and we'll fall off the edge of the world.
Maybe so. But I've decided the first aid kit now requires a map to be complete.
