The Retirement Jeep and Other Stories

My parents just ordered a new car. It'll be a candy-apple red Jeep Liberty with "all the bells and whistles." With my parents, that could mean actual bells and whistles. But I'm told it also includes GPS. It's not quite the GPS my Mom would like, though. It'll probably be all polite, and she anticipates that being ineffective. What she would prefer is more along the lines of Global Positioning Sarcasm: "You missed the turn, idiot! Did I stutter? Now we're going to have to go a half hour out of our way. I'm not going to be the one to tell your husband why we're late getting home." Perhaps she knows she's likely to get mad at it, and wants it to give her a good reason.

Mom tends to get lost. [I have her permission to share this. We share the same priorities: Funny trumps Embarrassing. By a LOT.] She grew up in North Dakota, where everything is straight, flat, and laid out in squares. You can see a silo 30 miles in the distance, aim toward it with your car/plane/buffalo, and get there. One can easily imagine, then, how more haphazard layouts might be confusing to someone used to that kind open terrain. Haphazard layouts. Hmm, where might one find those? Let's pick a place at random-- say, Europe. Oh, hey, it just so happens Mom got lost in Europe! Who saw that coincidence coming?

One summer, when we were living in Germany, Mom loaded up the dog, my brother and me for a vacation to Belgium and Luxembourg. [A little tip for the travelers among you: Don't go there unless your idea of fun is not having fun.] So, we're driving through Germany, through lots of little towns. On a tiny street in a tiny town, there's a little booth with a bar that lifts, like you'd see upon exiting a parking garage. It's empty, and the bar is up. That was odd. We drive some more, and some more. We haven't seen signs in ages. How long does Germany go, anyway? When will there be a sign telling us where we are? Eventually we make it into a city, and start trying to find out where we are. Not so easy when you don't speak the language. Finally, we manage to figure out that we're in Luxembourg City. In case you didn't major in Geography, I'll let you in on a little-known fact: That's not in Germany. I know, where's the logic? Turns out it's the capital of Luxembourg. We were in the capital, and we didn't even know we were in the country.

It's kind of understandable, though, because Luxembourg is small. What's much more impressive is that we once accidentally almost went to Canada. I had spent the summer in Maine, doing music stuff. Mom came to take me home. A couple hours into the trip, we stopped to eat, then headed back on our way. I noticed we seemed to be passing a lot of the same towns we'd passed before lunch. We looked, and we were heading South, the correct direction to for getting to Connecticut. How was this happening? Then we realized: It was happening because we'd spent the first two hours of the trip heading in the wrong direction. Looking at a map, we saw that we'd almost hit Canada. Four hours after our initial departure, we get back our starting point and Mom sends me to a pay phone to call Dad and tell him we'll be late, with an added command: "Don't tell him what we did." How am I supposed to pull that off without lying? So I call, and say, "Dad, we're leaving Hancock now." "I thought you were leaving at noon!" "Yeah, uh, we're leaving now." "OK." Close call.

Yeah, with or without the sarcasm, that GPS is a good idea.

Upon reflection, it's also apparent that I'm not the most useful person to have as a passenger.