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.)