GPS v. Shirley

Last weekend I took Kaitlyn and 4 of her closest friends to Minneapolis for the weekend. You may wonder how a father would be persuaded to do such a thing. Kaitlyn just celebrated her 16th birthday and for a final hurah we said she could do something fun with friends. We left it up to Kaitlyn to pick who she wanted to chaperon the weekend. Shirley said "If we go shopping in Minneapolis, I'm not just dropping you girls off at some mall and leaving you alone".

I said "If you decide on Minneapolis, I AM dropping you off at the mall. I will NOT stick with you and your friends. You'll be on your own". Kaitlyn's response, "Dad is taking me!"

My Mom and Dad just went to Arizona and before they left, they bought a Garmin GPS unit. We'll call her "Ms. Garmin". I've never used one of these before and never thought I'd have a use for one. Shirley is typically my navigator and chief map reader. Since she was not going to be along and I wanted to be anywhere but the mall, I asked if I could borrow it for the trip. Plus....Sakakawea (my map reader name for Shirley) has been slipping a little lately in the navigational area.....possibly time to look for another scout option. I doubt Lewis & Clark kept Sakakawea the entire trip, unless she was a good cook as well.

Right away I noticed the difference between Shirley and Ms. Garmin. Ms. Garmin took up LESS space. Just a little 3X5 square that sat on the dash board. Ms. Garmin only spoke when I needed a reminder to turn.

Typically when we are in unfamiliar territory, Shirley will read the map and I'm usually in the left lane when I need to be in the right lane. I'll hear"...RIGHT, get in the RIGHT lane; why aren't you in the right lane we have to turn Right right here!".

"Possibly because it is full of OTHER vehicles and I need more notice than as we are going by the turn??!", I'd say.

Ms. Garmin on the other hand typically says, in a rather sluty voice I might add, "in 1 mile you will need to turn right"....followed by silence for the next 1 mile. Then Ms. Garmin will say "in 400 feet "you need to turn right".....followed by silence for 400 feet. Then Ms. Garmin will say "turn right here".

On the rare(?) occasion that Shirley and I do get lost (and by now the kids don't even put down their books, they know we have to turn around and go through the whole thing all over again), we screach and claw at each other until I've turned the family fun bus around and we now have to figure out how to get back to the original set back - using the same methods as previously described.

When I took a wrong turn in Mpls, Ms. Garmin just said, again in that mystifiying voice, "Recalculating". The first time I ignored Ms. Garmin's suggestions, I was already cringing in fear - exactly like a dog that has been beat too many times. MUCH to my surprise, all I heard was "recalculating". Throughout the weekend, whenever I made an error, Ms. Garmin simply said "recalculating". She'd then take about 2 seconds and have a new route all maped out. It was certainly different than the turning and thrashing of the map we'd usually endure from Sakakawea.

The other slight difference is that after an exhausting multi route trip, the family doesn't even wait for the fun bus to stop before the doors are thrown open and everyone vacates the vessel. We're just plain tired of the confusion and arguing. All 4 go in different directions. With Ms. Garmin, all you hear, again in that voice but with a much more excited tone, is "Arriving at destination!" There wasn't a "if you'd listened to me, we'd have gotten here sooner", or "Geez, Dad, that took long enough. Thanks for all the detours" Or, from everyone including the dog "It is about time!".

Next time we saunter into unfamiliar territory with the family fun bus, I'm taking Ms. Garmin AND Shirley along. Yes, the volume on both will be turned up and it will be interesting who's commands I follow. Old habits are hard to break.

There is one area though that Ms. Garmin can't compare to Shirley. That comes in the physical department, if you know what I mean. That's right, Ms. Garmin can't fetch the remote for me....yet.

Possibly, after Shirley reads this and I am sleeping in the van tonight, I'll be rehashing Ms. Garmin's advice and when I thought of typing this, I should have been "recalculating".