Dumbing Down Our Sense Of Direction

For decades men have abhorred having to stop somewhere to as directions. The popularity of the Garmin, TomTom, the Magellan have ushered in a new era. The very  same electronic tools may lead to the ruination of the male species.

30 years from now every male in a Sun City retirement village will have to wear a GPS necklace to make the journey from their Thursday afternoon Euchre club to the dining hall in time for dinner.

What man doesn’t love  a gadget ? So if they can have a gadget that tells them (in a female voice) where to go turn by turn its a win win. They don’t give another thought to how they are retraining their brain to be directionally dysfunctional. They will begin drooling over every new  and improved model they get a news flash on.

In my family it seems the more complicated the object, the more esteem it is held in. In 2004 my husband had the sales guy from the local electronics store come train him and install our new all in one remote which operated a whole cabinets worth of audio-visual equipment. The thing was lovely. You would have thought it was a magician in a box the way all of the male visitors to our household were captivated by it’s sleek design and seamless operation.

Bad Baby broke the remote

That was until one of the children pushed one wrong button in the sequence and there was no coming back from the remote hell it sent us to. Many a family feud was sparked by that remote and we learned an important lesson....if it requires one on one in home training to turn on my television, it is something I can live without.
 
On our recent trip to Austin we rented several cars. My husband travels a lot and earned his way to a free week from Hertz. He never leaves the parking lot without the Never Lost system. I rent my own vehicle for this trip, equipped with a trusty map and the Frequently Lost (or at least turned around) System.

We approach travel from very different perspectives. He’s usually on business. You land in your target city’s airport, pick up your car, have no idea how to get around. The GPS navigational systems allows you to plug in your destination’s address and you’re off to close the deal, viola, as simple as that. He only stays as long as the task takes and then he’s out of there.

When I travel I’m usually there for a longer stay, maybe a combination business/pleasure type of trip. I’ll do research on what to see, where to stay, where to eat, etc. I’ll read consumer reviews, make notes and click on maps for all the things that have piqued my interest. So when I arrive I already have a vague outline in my head of where things are.

I don’t have a GPS in my own car. When I rent a car I always shop around for the best deal and I hesitate to spend the extra money for the navigation system. There are times I wish I had one, like when you’re trying to see addresses on unfamiliar buildings or homes. I’ll fully admit the little devils can increase efficiency, which is important to me.

Figuring out what route to take on a road trip is like completing a puzzle, sort of a road Suduko. Sure I get turned around every now and then. I occasionally pass my exit, pass my destination or head out the wrong way. In finding the method of correcting myself I often learn things about the area I might not have known. Like the location of that hole in the wall taco stand. I learn alternate routes and develop my cache of data about my target area and into the vault it goes, to reside there until I need to recall it.

I like to think of it as exploration, not just getting from point A to point B. In the end I think you get a much better lay of the land. Not that being lost isn’t frustrating. I also don’t really like to ask for directions. According to most Austin residents, when ever I asked how long will this take the standard answer was, “about 20 minutes”. I found that not to be true frequently on my travels around that place.

I think the experiment of having one car with it, and one car without proves my theory that relying on a navigation system satisfies the need for instant gratification, but it also makes us lazy and eventually directionally challenged. By the end of the week I had a competent grasp on how to get around between Lake Travis, Austin and my hotel.

Who knows how much knowledge sunk into my husbands head, because he continued to drive around with that annoying directional bitch telling him every little thing, even though he had gone to the same Home Depot 4 times that week.

Men. Who can understand them?