On Giving Driving Directions

I have always had a good sense of direction, water, land makes no difference. What I realize most people are not listening when you give them routes, numbers, they want a visual, like old White House with tin roof on right, etc. while GPS has helped it is not ,enfaulable, case in point my country road, Follow GPS and you end up on a dead end looking at a cows arse. Bought some furniture from Carolina and told truck driver when you turn on Hwy 697, don't follow the GPS, look for an old Acadian house 4 ft off the ground on the left. Well, ringadinge, we are at a dead end. You're looking at a cows arse aren't you. Pause, turn around and listen to me.

As we used to say in the Navy...

"This is a no sh!tter"


Back when my son, Seth, was taking drivers ed we spent quite a bit of time together in the car after his classes. I won't go into how difficult it was to try and teach him how to drive a stick shift (teenage boys tend not to listen) or how many accidents we nearly had because he kept staring at the speedometer, but I will share a hillarious question that both I and one of my good friends, parents of my sons buddy, both received from our teenage boys.

So we're doing one of our afternoon drives and I tell my son "hey Seth, let's kill two birds with one stone here. Drive us to Walmart, I'll pick up what I need and then we can continue the driving lesson." He starts up the car, drives to the end of our drive and then looks over at me and asks "Which way?".

I thought I'd misunderstood him so I asked "Are you asking which route I want you to take or are you asking me for directions to Walmart?"

Seth - "Directions"

Me - "Are you kidding me?"

Seth - "No, really dad, which way?"

Me - "How can you not know the way? You've been to that bloody store a hundred times since we've lived here and you're telling me you never once, in all that time paid any attention to how we got there?!?!?!"

Seth, unfazed by my incredulity, responded - "No, not really. That brings up a good question Pop. You know when you get in the car and want to go somewhere, you know like to the movies, to the mall or like Walmart... Like, how do you know which way to go?"

After regaining consciousness, from the horse laughed induced stroke, I, in a much calmer voice, asked. "Bud, you're telling me that in the millions of hours riding in a car with me and all the hours riding in our plane, you have never paid attention to whee we were going?

Seth - "No not really, I'm usually busy reading or playing a game on my phone or gameboy" (remember those?).

So, needless to say, after him receiving directions from me on how to get to Walmart that day, we sat down and I went over navigation basics with him.

I was amazed that he had no idea which direction was north or where we lived, in relation to EVERYTHING else in the universe. Did I mention that he was an Honors Student taking pretty much all AP & Honors courses with over a 4.0 gpa?

Fast forward a couple of weeks later, we're at a cook-out of my son's friend Alex's family. Alex's dad is a great guy, 6'3", former Pro Baseball player. Melvin & I are sitting on the back deck talking while the burgers were grillin, and he turns to me and says... "Dino, you are never gonna believe what Alex asked me the other day!" Yup, you guessed it. Alex - "Hey dad, you know when you get in the car and you're gonna go somewhere? How do you know how to get there?"

After I regained consciousness, again from a laughter induced stroke, I shared my story with him. We nearly lost a lung, we were laughing so hard.

That summer both of our sons found summer jobs at different places. A couple of months into the summer we were having a cook-out at our house, Melvin and I get to talking and I said to him...

"Ya know, I'd hoped that all that time I spent, trying to teach Seth to navigate and read maps, wasn't time wasted, but do you know what he bought with his first paycheck?" And I sh!t you not, we both said in unison "A GPS"

Turns out Alex had done the exact same thing.

Other than the time it sent him to Charlotte when he was trying to get to Chapel Hill, or the time it sent him to Myrtle Beach SC instead of Ocean Isle Beach NC, or the time.... you get the point.


Gotta love technology and our ever increasing dependence on it.

Recently, I taught the older grandkids how to tell both time and direction using the sun ... they were in awe. LOL

The dependence upon all things electronic will eventually have consequences.

We live in what I call a society of sameness..Younger folks want every thing that everyone else has.This is especially true of electronic gadgets.They will stand in lines to pay big bucks for the latest updated phone when there's absolutely nothing wrong with the one they have.This week I took someone to a dentist's office.The room was full of folks playing on their smart phones.Except a young lady who had a flip phone.She told me that she was upset with her father because he bought her that phone that she is embarrassed to use.She said he's already promised to upgrade to a smart phone like every else has for her.It seems that these days electronic gadgets have become a status symbol among the younger crowd.They live in a different world than the one I grew up in.Mention an out house to teenagers today and watch the look on their faces.Electronics is part of their lives whether us ancient mariners agree with it or not.

I used to do backpacking and we relied on topographical maps and a compass to get to each destination, it really served me well. Started trucking in about 1980, so I have used maps forever...now I get in the truck I have Gps on my ELD (Electronic log book, think a tablet on a stalk) Gps on my personal cell phone, and gps on my company supplied phone... There is no substitute for having a map though, if I am going on a trip in the family car, the Garmin gets checked against the atlas.

I once called a restaurant in San Francisco, the invoice obviously had a bad address...when I called "Ben Cook" restaurant, I eventually found out it was "Bangkok"...that was a Thai restaurant ran by a Chinese guy that stuttered, without a doubt the worst directions I ever had.