Do You Know the Way to San Jose?

Do You Know the Way to San Jose?

I am so directionally challenged that if I were a lemming I couldn’t find my way off a cliff. People ask me which direction my house faces. “Why the street I tell them,” not entirely facetiously. Some folks are born with an internal compass that enables them to find their way out of the woods. I’m lucky that I find my way out of my house each morning. This is a failing that has been inherited by the Schottenfeld women—neither of my daughters excels directionally. When Mariel won a gorgeous compass as an award in Geology I was hysterical. She’s definitely going to need that.

My one redeeming directional feature is that once I’ve learned how to get somewhere I can find my way back again without breadcrumbs. It’s the initial trip that scares me. Thank God for my husband, Steve. He finds me directions and teaches me routes. Without him I would probably use a map to line the trunk of the car.

I thought my problems were finally solved when I bought myself a GPS. I pictured myself effortlessly following its directions, discovering new horizons, never being afraid of getting lost in the maze of Boston’s streets again. I was giddy with excitement. This is what Lewis and Clark must have felt like when they hired Sacagawea.

When the GPS arrived I drove the car out to the driveway so that the system could lock onto a satellite and I could begin to use this wondrous implement. I chose a soft woman’s voice as my navigator. She would be my traveling sister, leading me onward, never letting me get lost, choosing scenic byways and gently rolling hills. It was a nice fantasy while it lasted.

The first time I used it was on a route that I already knew. Mariel and I were running errands and I thought that it would be the perfect time to take the GPS out for a trial spin. The problem was that I was trying to read the map at the same time as I drove. Since I wasn’t wearing my reading glasses I was squinting like a nearsighted squirrel which resulted in a few near misses. Mariel yelled at me to keep my eyes on the road or she would rip the navigator off the windshield. I tried using it one more time, not much more successfully, and then left it sitting in its box, until I got a call from Lisa.

“Mom, I think I have the flu,” my poor daughter told me. “I feel so dizzy that I can’t get out of bed. Could you come tomorrow and take me to the doctor?”
“Of course,” I answered as any self-respecting mother would. “Can I bring you anything?”
“Well maybe some juice and some soup.”
“No problem,” I told her. “I’ll be there.”

Despite what I had told my daughter there was definitely a problem. I had never driven to her apartment in Somerville so I had no idea how to get there or for that matter how to get from her apartment to Beth Israel Hospital. I had my usual reaction to these kinds of situations: panic first then ask my long suffering husband to figure out how to get me from here to there and back again.

By the time he was done I had three sets of directions complete with maps and Powerpoint presentations, but just in case I decided to take the GPS for back up. You would think that I was traveling to Siberia. Luckily Lisa was feeling better so she could serve as my navigator. We work well as a team. She tells me where to go and I drive there. We agreed that the GPS added a certain charm to the whole adventure this time.

We had barely driven the few blocks to Mass Ave. when we had our first disagreement with Madame GPS. She insisted that we go left, but I was determined to go right and so I ignored her directions. When we reached Harvard Square the altercation escalated. Steve had instructed me to go down Massachusetts Avenue but Madame G. insisted on Memorial Drive. Each time I went one way, she insisted on another. Finally, after dealing with the crazy traffic and a GPS that was obviously experiencing PMS, I began to scream at the thing telling it what it could do with its directions and casting aspersions on its parenthood. Lisa was doubled up with laughter which was causing her to cough up a lung.

“What?!” I asked her. “You don’t sense the hostility that is emanating from this witch? What does she have against Mass Ave anyway? Lisa agreed that the voice coming from the plastic box did seem to be getting testier as I continued to ignore its directions. And then suddenly, ominously, it stopped altogether.
“Oh, oh,” Lisa said. “I think she’s seriously pissed off at us now.”

Well, we made it to the doctor and then back to Somerville and I even made it home. I agreed with Madame G’s directions so she seemed to calm down and by the end of the trip we were buddies. So who knows, maybe we’ll travel together again sometime. After all, she does seem to be a woman who knows where she’s going. And that’s more than I can say for myself.