Directions, please

I hate my navigation system. My husband would like to gouge his eyes out in frustration over that sentiment (wait a minute…isn’t Samson already missing his eyes?) Anyway…my intense loathing of our navigation system irks him to no end because I am a navigational idiot. No, that’s not some form of false modesty, it’s true. I can get lost pulling out of my own driveway. I never have any idea where I’m going unless I’ve driven there 100 times before. And someone ELSE driving me to that destination 100 times before does not count. There are places I’ve been going for years that I still have no idea how to get to. Go ahead, laugh, I got used to it a long time ago.

A good friend of mine pointed out the other day that in spite of my obvious handicap, I strangely keep volunteering to drive when a group of us is going out somewhere. She’s right…it’s weird…I’d never noticed that before. I think it has something to do with my neurotic need to make other people happy. I figure if I volunteer to drive, then no one else will have to worry about it. You could call that nice…except that then they all just spend their time worrying for their lives instead! (I do really weird things like almost turning the wrong way down exit ramps and stuff when I’m not sure where I’m going.)

Back to the present subject, you would think that all of that would make me LOVE having a navigation system in my vehicle, wouldn’t you? Well, I don’t. For one, the thing is downright annoying. A British chick saying, “In 300 feet, turn left” *ding* is not my idea of a good time. I really, really, really hate it when my technology talks to me. On top of that, given the level of my idiocy, I’m bound to make a wrong turn anyway, at which point Miss Brit goes into convulsive statements of “recalculating…recalculating…recalculating.” Samson’s lucky he doesn’t have a hole punched in his dash yet.

When my dear husband figured out that the voice prompts were bugging me, he kindly turned the voice prompt off so that it just gives me visual directions. Not a good idea. When you don’t know where you’re going, your driving skills are questionable at best, and you have 4 kids making an inordinate amount of noise in the back seat, taking your eyes off the road isn’t advisable. On top of that, the visual prompts come primarily in the form of a handy little highlighted map. Maps and I have never gotten along. Do you really think that if I was proficient at reading a map I would have all this trouble in the first place?! To make matters worse, the map only shows you about 1 block at a time (tiny screen and all) which only increases my anxiety resulting from feeling like I don’t know where I am or where I’m going.

There are lessons to be learned here:

First, it is possible to defy the odds – I’ve never been involved in a car accident (unless you count the one that involved a fire hydrant when I was 16)

Second, adding a handy-dandy navigation system to a vehicle will not turn an idiot driver into Mario Andretti (much to the chagrin of one’s husband)

Third, if you see a large white Suburban driving the wrong way down an exit ramp, don’t be a jerk and honk. Move over and kindly wave while acting like the whole thing is completely normal. You never know, you just might make my day (until I get in a head-on collision).