G.P.S.

By G. E. Shuman

Last weekend my family and I had to make a quick trip to Boston. Andrew had tryouts for a quite elite (nose symbolically in the air) New England basketball team, and we needed to have him at Boston College by noon on Sunday. We are no strangers to Boston, and can usually find ourselves around there fairly easily. This is thanks only to the fact that my wife has never gotten lost, anywhere, whereas I am, pretty much, lost, everywhere. Lorna has always been the pathfinder, the navigator, and the ‘get us back on the right road’ half of our couple, since our earliest dating days. (Of course, it was easier back then, as all you had to do was pull the right way on the reigns.)
One difference in this trip than in others was that we had never been to the side of Boston that the college is on, and we really had to get there on time. Our son in law, Adam, offered to loan us his G.P.S. device for the day, and set it up for us, (We elderly people are hard to teach.) so that it would take us right from their home in Williamstown, to Boston College. I had never experienced using a G.P.S. ‘thing’ before. My father never used a cell phone. My grandfather never used a computer. My great grandfather never used a television. So, I am in excellent company, and am happy with that.
To make a long story short, or at least shorter than it could be, I have to admit that I loved using the G.P.S. device. I am fairly ‘geek-world-oblivious’, and hate many things-electronic, but not that one. From the moment we left our daughter’s driveway, the little unit began directing us. It even told us that part of the route it had chosen for us included dirt roads; a fact we already knew, as we were on the dirt road.
This is a little bit off the subject, but if you read my column regularly you know that I tend to get a little bit off-subject a large bit of the time. As we drove, at first just following the G.P.S. as a novelty, down roads we already knew well, I began thinking about three-letter abbreviations. That is likely just the boring English teacher in me, but that’s what happened. I know that by the time most of you had read the title of this column, you knew what it was about. You knew what a G.P.S. is. I began thinking of all the things, over the years, that humankind has relegated to three-letter abbreviations, and began wondering why in the world we do this silly stuff. Early on there were abbreviations like U.S.A., F.B.I., D.O.D., C.I.A., and the ever popular I.R.S. and D.M.V. Wars brought something called the D.M.Z. Politics and bigger government added titles like G.O.P., D.N.C., and. E.P.A., among many others. Add to that the entertainment industry entries of A.B.C., C.B.S., N.B.C., FOX, HSN, QVC, and M.G.M., to name a few. Law enforcement came up with DWI and DUI. UPS came up with UPS. (How imaginative.) Now, in the electronic age, we have already buried something called the VCR, replacing it with DVD. We have gone from LED’s to LCD’s, and everyone is familiar with the terms ROM, RAM, CPU, and ‘the mother of all three-letter abbreviations’: WWW. (This paragraph was just a side note. There is no extra charge for it.)
Getting back to the G.P.S. and our trip, at one point we were approaching several exits from the highway we were traveling. At that exact moment, Lorna, my nearly obsolete navigator, (Don’t tell her I said that.) touched the touch screen with her finger. In her defense, isn’t that what a touch screen is for? The screen immediately reverted to a previous display, and we, naturally, got off on the wrong exit. (Now, for the cool part.) The G.P.S. immediately, without the slightest hint of irritation in its voice, simply directed us back to the highway. At one point, after I had turned one way when I should have turned the other, it actually, calmly, almost serenely, told me to make a u-turn. Another time, during another mistake, (mine, again,) the G.P.S. instructed me to turn around “as soon as possible.” (I can’t believe I just quoted something the size of a deck of cards.) My wife also liked the little device; my guess is because it never told her to keep her paws off the touch screen; something I had wondered if it would to. During some of the short journeys back from my navigational boo boos I was also half waiting for it to utter under its breath, although it doesn’t actually have breath, things like: “You never listen to me!” Or: “Just go home!” Or even: “I have a headache.”
The trip was quite successful. We got to the college in plenty of time, Andrew made the team, and we headed home. At one point on the trip back, Lorna mentioned, a bit sadly, that if we buy a George Positioning System: “You won’t need me anymore.” My reply was that she should feel good about that, because then she wouldn’t have to go wherever I went, just to keep me on the straight and narrow.
Married guys, take some advice. Get a G.P.S. That way, even when you’re out driving alone, you will never be lonely. You’ll always have a voice onboard to tell you where to go, and exactly how to get there. (Sorry Honey.)

Hello Friends!

I hope you are enjoying my blog site. George’s World has been a real blessing to me. It’s great to be able to share my ‘stuff’ with all of you. I’m kind of old-fashioned, (wow, that is an understatement,) and have not yet ventured into the world of ‘facebook’, or other online communication mediums. (I still use a telephone with a cord attached to it… believe it or not. I will be the very last American to have a facebook account. I’m not sure why, other than an inborn stubborn streak, which tells me I will not do ANYTHING someone tells me I MUST do.) Actually, communication ‘mediums’ is probably a good choice of words for me. I am likely better off peering into a crystal ball than into a computer screen. Anyway, feel free to share my site with others. In fact, I would now like to, shamelessly, unabashedly, encourage, coerce and BEG you to link your facebook page to my site, or my site to your page,,, whichever is the right term. And then to tell everyone to link it to theirs. I have been told, by people less than a quarter my age, that this is the best way to promote the site, and also my first novel. The Smoke and Mirrors Effect is my first feeble attempt at over-the-top, metaphysical fiction, but it has been quite well accepted by people much smarter than me. The truth is, I hope you will buy a copy, because I would love to sell you a copy. Click on the link to Amazon.com. and help put my kids through college. Hugs, George

No Small Miracles

By G. E. Shuman

Miracles happen. They really do. I’m not here to convince you of this fact. I’m just here to state it as I understand it. I used to think that big miracles happened, and small ones. It would, also, only make sense that if there were big and small miracles, there would likely be medium-sized ones, too. I used to just ‘believe’ in miracles. Over the years, especially recent ones, I have become solidly convinced of them. I want to tell you of one such ‘convincer’.
With our suddenly much-improved weather, it’s hard to believe that about three weeks ago I was totally stuck in a snow bank, at the end of my daughter Chrissy’s driveway, at the very end of a long, dirt, country road in Williamstown. Chrissy and her family, along with my wife and our youngest daughter, were not close by. In fact, they were in sunny Florida, visiting Mickey Mouse. (For those of you, whom, I have heard, read my last column and believed Lorna had actually ‘left’ me for a big black ‘mousey’ guy with huge ears, well, I have no words. People, it was a joke.) Our teenage son Andrew was weathering the storm at our home in Barre City on this particular day. In fact, at the time in question, I believe he was still unconsciously weathering it from his bed. I had ventured out to the woody-wilds (or willy-wags, as I have heard them called) of Williamstown, to care for Chrissy’s alpacas. Yes, I said alpacas. (Some people have cats. Chrissy has alpacas. I have owned cats. I vote for the alpacas.) This February vacation week I had been left in Vermont to shuttle Andrew to and from basketball games, and to shovel up, and I don’t mean just snow. I had been in the process of shoveling alpaca poo, and snow blowing my daughter’s family’s driveway, during this snow-shower, freezing-rain, hale-storm sort of a day. The more I shoveled snow and other stuff that day, the more I hated Mickey Mouse.
I had parked our minivan at the road end of the long driveway, and found it necessary to move the thing to snow blow that area. I got in the van, put it in reverse, and proceeded to experience an unexpected lateral ride, (Wheeee!) as the front of the van, almost surreally, slipped softly and slowly into a roadside ditch; immediately becoming buried up to its headlights in that day’s winter wonderland scene. How lovely.
I put the van into reverse and heard the expected spinning of the wheels. Then, as any experienced, slightly-aging New England driver knows to do, I tried ‘rocking’ the vehicle, by shifting gears, back and forth, from drive to reverse. I, again, heard the stomach-wrenching spinning of the wheels, and the car didn’t rock at all. Those snow tires spun just as nicely in drive as in reverse. The thought then came to me, that someone had once told me you could use your car’s floor mats under the wheels to help get you out. I immediately tried this, and immediately messed up my floor mats, while, once more, hearing the now-expected spinning of the wheels.
Next, after shutting the engine off, I tried something I had not yet done. I prayed. I am a Christian, and I pray a lot. I pray for safety for my family, and for God’s continued blessings. Many times I pray just to talk to Him. This time, for a moment, I prayed that He would help me get out of that ditch. I was feeling somewhat alone in this fairly secluded place, unable to un-ditch the van, and had just experienced a little all-too- familiar chest discomfort as I shoveled out the front wheels. “Real smart situation to get yourself into, George.” (I said that, so you wouldn’t have to.) If I actually had been smart, my moment of prayer would have happened several minutes earlier than it did. Then I would not have tortured my floor mats so. The truth is, I looked up from praying, opened the door of the van, and saw a huge town sand truck lumbering up the lonely road, toward me. The truck stopped beside the van, and a friendly man smiled as he opened his big door.
“Do you think you could pull me out of this?” I practically begged.
“I don’t know.” was his kind, gravely-voiced reply. (Sand truck guys always have gravely voices.) “I can put some sand under your wheels.” He continued, as he jumped down from the cab.
Within two minutes, he had sanded under my front wheels, and I had backed the van out of the predicament I had foolishly gotten myself into.
“Thank you so much!” I said, through panting breaths and rain-soaked face. “What can I give you for helping me?”
“Nothing.” replied the kind man, smiling back at me, as he climbed up into the cab of the huge truck. “Sand’s free.”
I thanked the driver once more, but, to my shame, I didn’t think to thank God until the sand-man had left.

It seems very strange to me that many people cower in impending calamity, and choose to give credence to something called coincidence when such calamity is, somehow, avoided. Things that need to happen, and do happen, exactly at times when they are needed, are considered luck, or fate. Indeed, to consider such things provision for our needs would require believing in a provider; something many people refuse to do. I consider my encounter with the sand truck to have been the supplying of a need in my life, at the very moment that I needed it. That truck could well have come to sand that old icy road hours before, or hours after I got my van stuck that day, instead of one or two minutes after I had prayed for help. I would ‘wager’ that the ‘luckiest’ of Las Vegas gamblers would never have bet on a many-ton, huge sanding truck suddenly appearing like that.
Not solely, but partially because of my experience that day, I no longer believe in small miracles, or medium-sized ones either. When you are the receiver, your miracle is as big as a huge town truck, full of sand, which did not send ‘itself’ to you.