My GPS thinks I'm an idiot

My mother and I drove to Baltimore on Sunday afternoon with my dad's GPS. He got it for Christmas. It was all he really wanted, as he is inexplicably drawn to electronic devices that talk.

My aunt and uncle bring small, cheap gifts for everyone at Easter. I got a plastic wind up chicken that walks and shits out gum balls. My dad got a key chain that records a short message and then plays it back louder and more obnoxious than it was originally spoken. He spent an hour recording ridiculous things like, "My key chain is cooler than that chicken," and then playing them into my mother's ear. She eventually wrestled it from him to record, "You're an idiot."

Somehow this ended with the two of them shamelessly canoodling on a corner of my grandmother's couch and me recording, "Remember back when mom was going through menopause and you two weren't really touching each other? Ahh, the good old days."

But I digress.

My mother and I drove to Baltimore on Sunday afternoon with my dad's GPS. Sitting in my parents' driveway, we plugged in our hotel's address. When we got to the stop sign at the end of the street, the GPS woman's voice yelled, TURN LEFT. We couldn't seem to figure out how to turn down the volume, so this was the start of six hours of an electronic woman screaming at us. There were several long stretches without turns when we would practically forget that we had the damn thing. Then she'd interrupt our otherwise pleasant conversation to yell, KEEP RIGHT, and we'd both jump and swear at her a little.

At one point, we stopped for gas. The GPS, noticing that we had veered from the prescribed route, screamed RECALCULATING... meaning it was going to come up with a way to get us to our destination even though we had gone off course. My mom said, "Oh, that reminds me. Did I ever tell you what happened when Grandma and Aunt Shirley used one of these?"

Grandma is my mom's mom, and she is crazy. Aunt Shirley is my grandma's sister, and she is bat shit crazy.

"First of all," I said, "who in their right mind would give Grandma one of these? The last thing that woman needs is a distraction while she's driving or an excuse to go anywhere she doesn't already know how to get to."

I say this because my grandma is an awful driver. Awful. The woman rolls down her window and hangs her head outside the car to look behind her as she backs out of her driveway. She whips back into the vehicle as she approaches the lamp post at the end, so as not to give herself a concussion. If you back out of her driveway, she'll warn you about it... "Be careful at the end there, honey. That lamp will take your head right off." If we could get the GPS to say, GET BACK IN THE CAR, that may be helpful. But, I think a device that simply yells KEEP RIGHT is only likely to distract her into driving RIGHT into a pedestrian or a pole.

My mom continued, "The GPS belongs to your Aunt Shirley, who, I imagine, drives about as well as your grandmother. Anyway, you know how neither of them listens to a word anyone says? Yes, well, this was no exception. They plugged in their destination, the GPS showed them the route, and they both immediately decided that just couldn't be right. It didn't look right. The woman in the little gray box must be mistaken. So, they went their own way, and the GPS said recalculating. Except, they never liked the looks of the route it recalculated, so they never followed it. The woman's voice kept saying recalculating. At one point, your Aunt Shirley leaned over and whispered to Grandma, 'You know, this happens to me all the time with this thing. I never follow the route, and then I worry a little that the GPS woman thinks I'm stupid.'"

Aunt Shirley is a therapist. People come to her for help.

I said, "Can't you just see it... A patient says to her, 'Sometimes I worry that people don't like me' and Shirley says, 'Oh, I know just how you feel. I'm afraid my GPS thinks I'm an idiot.'"

My mom and I laughed about this for several miles. The woman eventually interrupted us to suggest we EXIT LEFT. We wet ourselves a little and yelled STOP YOUR FUCKING SCREAMING. And then, we exited left. So as not to appear idiotic.