Driving rules

I have been doing a fair amount of the driving. When Dad drives, Mom has to navigate. When they were alone, it had come to be the only working arrangement. Mom can’t drive because Dad isn’t up to navigating. He has always been a map fuddler, a double checker, and a doubter of directions or his own hunches about where the map and the world met. He never really believed a sign that said “Hwy 10 N Left Lane 1mi.” He could comment at such a sign “They probably aren’t talking about the same Hwy 10.” But he was a famously good navigator on vacations and at the Fire Department, maybe because of his essential doubt and inquisitiveness.
But add to that doubt his increasing inability to remember from 15 minutes to the next…
“I don’t know where we are going.”
I tell him.
And in another 15 minutes: “I have no idea where we are.”
I try to reassure him by telling him the itinerary for the day. Or I just try to ease the anxiety. He feels that sitting shotgun with a map in his hand, that something needs to be done. “That’s okay Dad, feel free to look at the map, but I know just where we are and where we are going. Enjoy the scenery” Oh. He is certainly deflated by this, by the small and large detours we have taken around his participation.

He has now stopped asking.

And we have started talking through his past, his childhood, his life in the Fire Department.


The GPS is both a boon and a boondoggle. Its good as an outside authority to be relied on, allowing Dad (and the rest of the crew) to relax and stop cross referencing the 13 sources of map info: my phone, my computer, 3 atlases, 2 or three RV guides with directions to parks, and the oft-discounted actual road signs. “I-10N”. What does that mean? Is that the WAY to I-10 or are we on it now?

And S.H.E., the voice of GPS, is very self assured. SHE becomes strident when you disregard her directives. SHE is always taking the “business route” and avoiding straight shots to interstate onramps. Once you ignore her, every intersection we approach she pipes up “Turn right at Hibbard ST” Turn RIGHT at HIBBART ST. Then take another RIGHT.” Always trying to get me to turn around. I get a little giddy ignoring her increasingly worried and insistent requests for me to change my ways.

This is a boondoggle, as it upsets the crew. They are aware of and have experienced her dalliances, but my mutiny against the navigator runs deep. I only use her as one thought about what the world is, SHE is but one interpretation among the 10 or twelve. I appreciate her thoughts, but until I can uncover her underlying desires, I can not act solely on her admonitions. It would be like voting based on the suggested ballot of a newspaper without knowing its editorial stance. Or reading a scientific report funded by “The Responsible Forest Stewardship Council” without knowing the bona fides of the members of that council. Corporate Fiber Industry Conglomerates? Or local conservation groups?

Regardless of my rebelliousness, I have become driver. Mom gets to crochet, Dad naps and has his intermittent stomach upsets. And I get to drive “the rig”. I think will borrow “the rig” later this summer and drive it somewhere. But bring bikes and backpacks along. Leave the poodle at home. I will smile broadly both inside and out while refering to "my rig." As in: "I was really ready to get off and I had my junk ready, but my rig was broken. I tried to borrow my buddies' rig, but nothing doing." Wayne and Marge would appreciate the sentiment, and could relate.