Skip to main content

GPS unplugged~


I had a little argument today. With my GPS. I was headed to visit my son in a city 60 miles north, an hour and fifteen minutes away. It took me longer than this.

I listened to my GPS. The GPS, a gift from my husband, is insurance that I'll arrive where I'm trying to go. Before the GPS, I arrived late, after trial and error, use of reverse gear, U-turns, and some swearing. And phone calls.

Driving, for me, is like playing a game of chess where only a few spaces at a time are revealed. Apparently I'm one of those people with poor ability to form a "mental map."

Call it what you will-- a weakness, a problem, a disability-- coupled with the fact that I confuse left and right, it makes for a round-about trip.

But the GPS has been great. Until today. There is something extremely stubborn about artificial intelligence. And to be fair, I can be stubborn too. We didn't see eye to eye.

In retrospect, I realize it was trying to take me by the most direct route as the crow flies. I was trying to take myself by my blurry mental map, albeit a longer way. When I left home and it said, "Go right." I said, "What?"

I got lost one other time when I didn't trust the GPS. My husband said, "That's why you have the thing. Next time listen to it." So, I did at first, but I grew anxious, and did what I haven't done since I got it. I called him.

"Bruce? This GPS is telling me to go the wrong way. I really don't trust it. At all."

He confirmed my mental map would do the trick, so I ignored Miss GPS. Ha!

But she wouldn't shut up. She kept patiently "recalculating" and entreating me to exit the highway and fly with her crow. Finally, out of insecurity, second-guessing myself, I did.

I could hear her breathe a sigh of relief; I got where I was going not much later than a normal person.

The visit with Jesse was half as long as the time it took me to get home.

I had told Bruce, "I'm going to follow its exact directions home." It sounds simple, but people who need these gadgets are the ones least able to utilize them properly.

It told me, "In point two miles, turn right."

Okay, but there is a right turn now, at point one mile, and I don't see one ahead. I better take this. What one tenth of a mile? It must mean this right turn.

"Recalculating," it said. Did I detect annoyance? These GPSs are such sticklers for accuracy.

Okay, my bad. But with the impatient Massachusetts drivers honking at me . . . there isn't much time to make a decision. We worked together, the GPS recalculating when her directions were so poor that I couldn't follow them. Geez, for a $200.00+ piece of technology . . .

It only took me three hours to get home. Don't ask! It was just a little disagreement, and I lost.
~~~~~

How it all began: Mother's Day GPS


The Resolution: Out of the forest

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

For Alice~ She's home!!!!!!!

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Sometimes it's all about knowing that loved ones and friends stand behind you, knowing that support is there on the down days, the worry days, the days when you feel off-center, out of sync, bedraggled emotionally, and in pain, but knowing all the while that you're not alone. You're not alone... Alice is an online friend--she lives in Hawaii-- who belongs to the writer's workshop that I do. We've only "met" online, but those who have online friendships know that they can be just as strong as those in-person relationships. Alice was hit by a car while walking, and is in the rehab phase of things. She's working to regain mobility after a broken pelvis, a broken arm, and a broken nose. It's scary to realize how, in the blink of an eye, life can lurch and our plans for a time are displaced by survival and healing. We...
37 comments
Read more

Killing time~

I'd woken feeling stuffy headed, slightly allergy-ish, puffy-eyed, and a tad grumpy. Lots to do, little time in which to do it, school issues keeping me in a state of angst, I considered not going to David's game. But it was Saturday, the game fairly close to home-- Salem State College-- an hour or so north through Boston to the town of Salem, famous for the 1692 witch trials that saw 19 suspected witches, many of them social outcasts, hang on Gallows Hill. A change of pace was what I needed whether I wanted it or not, so I went. I squeezed in a walk around the block that enclosed Salem State's O'Keefe Center while waiting for the game to begin. Just to kill time. I get so few chances to do that. Others walking, too, passed with no eye contact, no greetings, just sharing the same planet. Two were coming toward me. Still unfocused in the distance . . . one was tall, the other short . . . two men . . . loose clothing . . . like army clothes, camouflage . . . beard and lon...
18 comments
Read more

Missing Becky~

Becky~ August 19, 1991 to April 26, 2010 She was so loved, this gentle pet of mine.  And how she loved us back. I've been alone in my house before, of course. Those days when my husband took the kids out for the day, being able to vacuum without a baby in one arm and a toddler, riding the vacuum cleaner like it was a bronco, was solitary pleasure. Later there were quiet days as the kids were at camp and my husband at work. And then came the bittersweet aloneness when kids left home for college and a life apart. Still, I'd always liked being alone, knowing it was short lived. This morning, after my husband pulled out of the driveway with a day full of plans,  I stood in the living room feeling alone in a way I never had before.  An unfamiliar emptiness and silence surrounded me. Yesterday we put our 18-year-old cat, Becky, to sleep. The decision to do so was surprisingly easy. The vet had told us Becky would let us know when it was time, and somehow she did. But ...
18 comments
Read more