A few days ago my live-in-fellow interrupted one of my fairly routine soliloquies about the detrimental effects of technology on the youth to assert a certain humbling fact.
The object of my tentative attack was the ever-more-common GPS unit, and I was pondering (vocally) that perhaps the prevalence of GPS units makes people less apt to be aware of their surroundings and to develop a sense of direction. As we pulled away from the grocery store I was really hitting my melodramatic stride, mourning cartography and suggesting passionately that maybe we should learn to navigate like sailors using stars and the mating calls of whales as reference points.
At this point my main squeeze (a google-mapper for life and quite ironically driving me around at the time) interrupted me mid-rant to remind me that I (sans GP-anything) am wretched at finding anything, even places I have been to many times before. I was aghast at his statement, but could offer no argument. I am indeed shitty at finding my way while driving; however, that fact had never distinguished itself from the many other things about driving that I am incapable of doing sufficiently to grab my attention.
I’ve been thinking about this since but try as I might, I can’t really blame myself for this appalling fact. I’ve been shamefully enabled into a very inattentive, if charming, passenger.
The foundation for my disability was laid early in life during long car rides to and from my grandparent’s ranch. I spent these car rides with my nose jammed into various cheesy tomes of historical fiction and trying to block the smooth sounds of Journey from my ears. I never attended to the scenery, most commonly I would look up bleary-eyed, surprised and somewhat disappointed whenever we arrived at our destination.
My parents are the sort who are incapable of leaving a social event before darkness has fallen, and so many of these long drives home were made in the dark, four sisters and various quadrupeds stuff into a smelly blue-and-white GMC tank. On the occasions that we drove home after dark, my dad would allow me to use a flashlight to read in the backseat, provided that I remembered not to shine it in his eyes while flipping the pages. I remember on one occasion demanding the attention of my whole family and reading a scandalous passage aloud in which a family on the Oregon Trail ate pancakes after bugs had flown into the batter; my mother craning her head around from the front seat and attentive all the while.
So if today I can’t find my way back to a restaurant that I’ve been to twice, I blame the hours of sitting in that wretched suburban and worrying about dysentery and oxen rather than bothering about the cardinal directions. Unfortunately I don’t get much time to read in the car anymore (only at long stop-lights, hella yes), so I’ve had to make due with convincing people that they enjoy driving me around, or letting me follow them.
I’m hoping that I can continue to sell myself as an endearing and helpful passenger (license-plate game, lock the doors when I see teenagers in the cross-walk) to the point where I’ll never have to invest in a GPS.
The object of my tentative attack was the ever-more-common GPS unit, and I was pondering (vocally) that perhaps the prevalence of GPS units makes people less apt to be aware of their surroundings and to develop a sense of direction. As we pulled away from the grocery store I was really hitting my melodramatic stride, mourning cartography and suggesting passionately that maybe we should learn to navigate like sailors using stars and the mating calls of whales as reference points.
At this point my main squeeze (a google-mapper for life and quite ironically driving me around at the time) interrupted me mid-rant to remind me that I (sans GP-anything) am wretched at finding anything, even places I have been to many times before. I was aghast at his statement, but could offer no argument. I am indeed shitty at finding my way while driving; however, that fact had never distinguished itself from the many other things about driving that I am incapable of doing sufficiently to grab my attention.
I’ve been thinking about this since but try as I might, I can’t really blame myself for this appalling fact. I’ve been shamefully enabled into a very inattentive, if charming, passenger.
The foundation for my disability was laid early in life during long car rides to and from my grandparent’s ranch. I spent these car rides with my nose jammed into various cheesy tomes of historical fiction and trying to block the smooth sounds of Journey from my ears. I never attended to the scenery, most commonly I would look up bleary-eyed, surprised and somewhat disappointed whenever we arrived at our destination.
My parents are the sort who are incapable of leaving a social event before darkness has fallen, and so many of these long drives home were made in the dark, four sisters and various quadrupeds stuff into a smelly blue-and-white GMC tank. On the occasions that we drove home after dark, my dad would allow me to use a flashlight to read in the backseat, provided that I remembered not to shine it in his eyes while flipping the pages. I remember on one occasion demanding the attention of my whole family and reading a scandalous passage aloud in which a family on the Oregon Trail ate pancakes after bugs had flown into the batter; my mother craning her head around from the front seat and attentive all the while.
So if today I can’t find my way back to a restaurant that I’ve been to twice, I blame the hours of sitting in that wretched suburban and worrying about dysentery and oxen rather than bothering about the cardinal directions. Unfortunately I don’t get much time to read in the car anymore (only at long stop-lights, hella yes), so I’ve had to make due with convincing people that they enjoy driving me around, or letting me follow them.
I’m hoping that I can continue to sell myself as an endearing and helpful passenger (license-plate game, lock the doors when I see teenagers in the cross-walk) to the point where I’ll never have to invest in a GPS.
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