I'll Stick With Maps, Thanks

I try to keep up with technology the best I can. I have a cell phone, thanks to my friend Sylvia, and I’ve got a laptop now, thanks to my friend Ursula. My desktop computer is currently residing at another friend’s house while I’m in the shelter. I didn’t trust it to sit in storage for all these months. Regardless, I’m straying already and I’ve barely started.

One piece of technology I have yet to purchase or inherit is a GPS. I just never really got interested in it because when I need directions to someplace I’ve never been I go to Google Maps to find out where I need to go to reach my destination. I search them, write them down, and then look at the map to make sure I know which way to turn. I’m not really good with north-south stuff, I prefer lefts and rights, and, for the most part, I always get to where I need to go without incident.

I actually find the GPS rather annoying at times. When I’m riding with someone who has a GPS engaged it’s difficult to hold a conversation because we’re constantly being interrupted by an automated voice telling the driver to turn here or there. And the sound of the voice gets really irritating since it’s so mellow and robotic sounding. I often ask whoever I’m with if they wouldn’t prefer a different voice in the machine like a celebrity or a cartoon character, and I wonder if that’s even possible.

It would be great if you could record your own voice telling you where to go and Ursula was telling me that she and Mark were even joking about how great it would be if the GPS could speak like a real person would. When you missed a turn it could say something like, “Hey dumbass, you missed your turn. What the fuck is wrong with you?” That would be cool, right? I think so. But again, I’m straying.

Most people tell me I don’t like the GPS because I’ve never used one. They tell me that I’d get used to the voice and learn to deal with it because “it’s really helpful.” A month ago I might have agreed with them. Now, though, I beg to differ. About three weeks ago I had my first experience driving with a GPS and I must say that if I never use one again I’d be none too upset.

I was working at Ursula’s one morning and she decided she needed me to drive to Westbury for her to run a few errands. It’s about a half hour away from where we were and even though I’d been to both places before I’d never driven there, I was always riding with someone else so I wasn’t familiar with how to get to either of them. She decided to have Samantha ride with me. Samantha is what she and Mark call the little woman in their GPS.

Ursula set the GPS for me for the first destination and showed me how to load in the second address once I’d finished at the first place. I was good to go, or so I thought. I got in my van and started driving, following Samantha’s directions as she blurted them out to me. “Turn left,” “Turn right,” and so on. I followed them exactly as she told me to and found myself on a road that I wasn’t supposed to be on. What the fuck? So I kept driving.

Suddenly Samantha was telling me to “Exit right.” Exit right?! Sweetheart, I’m not on a road that has exits. For some reason she thought I was on the parkway when, in fact, I was on Pulaski Road heading up through Huntington Station. Grrrr…so I called Ursula to ask her what was up with her GPS and how to fix it. She told me to turn it off and on again and just re-enter the address to the first place I needed to go; the GPS would figure out where I was and start guiding me from there. Okay. I did it.

Funny thing about a GPS, though, or about Samantha, is that she can’t tell when there is roadwork being done and the entrance ramp to the parkway has been closed. She kept telling me to “enter right” but I couldn’t, so I kept driving. Suddenly Samantha was “recalculating.” She eventually got me onto the expressway and I was headed on my journey, in the right direction. All was fine until I got to the exit I needed to take. I lost satellite signal and Samantha had no idea where I was so she couldn’t tell me which way to go. Thank goodness she had a map on her because I’d looked at that a few minutes earlier and tried to follow it from memory, and not too badly I must say. When the satellite re-engaged and she was with me once more she was telling me that I was arriving at my destination so I pulled into the parking lot; the WRONG parking lot. The place I needed to be was two parking lots farther up than where I was. Thanks Samantha, but you’re a bit off, Sweetie.

So I did what I needed to do there, entered the second address into Samantha’s data bank and was on my way. All was fine for a few minutes and then I had a real problem with her. She was telling me to “Turn right then turn left.” Nothing wrong with that, right? Wrong! I was sitting at a five-corner stop. Which right was I supposed to make, I had three to choose from. Tried one. Nope, it was wrong, so she recalculated and told me to turn around. I did. We did this a few times with me cursing her and getting more frustrated by the minute. I finally looked at the map again and put myself on the right road.

I was cruising along trying to listen to music on the radio, which is another thing Samantha made difficult because she kept interrupting, and I had to keep the music turned down low so I could hear her annoying automated voice gently guiding me in the wrong direction. Whatever, I was still on my way to the second destination. Suddenly I was on a road going straight when Samantha must have gotten ill. I don’t know why, perhaps she bumped her head inside that tiny box while I was making all the wrong turns she was telling me to make.

I was driving completely straight, just following traffic, when Samantha instructed, “In point seven miles turn left. Recalculating. In point five miles turn right then turn left. Recalculating. In one mile turn right.” Are you fucking kidding me? Samantha, what’s wrong with you? It’s a good thing I didn’t do any of the things she told me to do or I’d have looked like an idiot spinning in circles, running people off the road, and plowing into buildings. How do you explain that to the police when they arrive? “Gee officer, I don’t know what happened. Samantha was fine and she suddenly went fucking crazy on me for no reason. You want to arrest someone arrest her stupid ass.” I don’t think that explanation would fly too well.

Since I didn’t know what to do I just kept driving straight. I got one final “Recalculating” out of the dumb bitch and she went quiet for a few seconds. Was she dead? I could only hope but couldn’t get that lucky. She had apparently gotten rid of her hiccups or whatever other ailment had overtaken her and was back on track. “In one mile turn right.” In one mile she re-instructed me to turn right so I did. Within two minutes I was at my destination. Hallelujah! I’d made it there and I was still alive. I did what I had to do and got back in the van to head back to Ursula’s.

Luckily for me I didn’t need Samantha on the way back because I knew where I was and just stayed on the main road until I came to the parkway. I hopped on and was on my way, without Samantha’s assistance. I turned her off and told her I never wanted to hear her voice again. I got back to Ursula’s just in time to give her the supplies I’d purchased on my outing and was out the door and on my way home to meet the school buses.

Before I left, though, I told her what a pain in the ass Samantha was and that I really wanted to throw the bitch out the window somewhere along the Northern State Parkway. Please, next time I have to run errands give me written instructions or just give me the address and I’ll Google Map it myself so I’m sure of the twists and turns. At least then I know I’ll get to where I’m going; with Samantha guiding me there’s no telling where I’ll end up and I may just have to do away with her somewhere along the way.

Until next time…peace to all.