Samantha, the other woman

Finally, I bought a Garmin GPS so that my husband and I could stop arguing over directions when we take road trips.  He's never satisfied with the MapQuest or Google directions I've printed out.  Despite the fact those directions have only confused us or given us misdirections maybe 3 times out of over 4,000 miles traveled, according to him, "They're wrong every time."

So, in order to save my marriage, I bought the GPS; I have my attorney on hold.  The first time we used it, I typed in simple local destinations and Samantha, our GPS feminine vocal guide, had us taking bizarre routes.  She would have had us going needlessly around blocks instead of staying on main roads.  So, she was constantly "recalculating" directions for us while my husband carried on that the device "isn't worth shit" and we need to return it.  It doesn't help matters that per town records, there exists a "paper street" along side our property, but in reality, it does not exist.  It is a wooded lot owned by the town.  Samantha, however, insists that we should drive through the wooded lot to get to the main street which our home is actually located on and where our driveway lets out.  She thinks, for some strange reason, that we should drive through our backyard unto the street behind our home, and then up through the wooded lot owned by the town (the paper street) onto the main road.  If she can't get me out of my own driveway, I cannot help but be concerned about long distance road trips.  I don't pretend to understand how Samantha works, but I am worried I have acquired the Bird's Eye GPS, engineered only for winged travellers.

Having once figured out that Samantha was misadvised, we used a neighbor's address as "home."  At the very least, if anyone ever steals our GPS thinking we're not home with the intent to steal from it, they'll end up at my neighbor's instead.  I hope she'll be home and calls the police in such an event.  I've heard that this is a wise thing to do in general.  I'm hoping Edna next door hasn't put our home into her GPS, but if she has, it's likely any thieves will end up in the woods.

Our first real trip, we ventured out to a local bakery successfully, after taking our preferred route as opposed to the one suggested by Samantha who quickly "recalculated" at every block and eventually just went with the flow.

We then headed out to a restaurant an hour away in Somers Point, NJ, for a family celebration for my mother's only cousin's 90th birthday bash.  Samantha guided us to the Garden State Parkway all right.  My back up MapQuest directions told us to take Exit 30 and then one or two turns from there to the destination.  Samantha wanted us to take exit 48 to Route 9, but when we blew by that exit, she recalculated again and suggested exit 36.  My husband told her to go "F" off and blew by that exit as well and she again recalculated.  As if an original idea, she finally told us to take exit 30 then instructed us to take various "turns" off the "roundabouts", but the area was under massive construction, having removed the "roundabouts" and all the signs.  Thankfully, we followed our instincts and the MapQuest directions and stumbled upon the restaurant while Samantha was throwing a fit, recalculating and trying to tell us our destination was actually a little further up the road, but I believe she may have just been directing us to a separate entrance into the lot.  My husband nearly threw her out the window at that point, telling her to just shut the hell up.  I was starting to get jealous.

For the ride home, Samantha mainly stayed quiet and once off the parkway, we came to realize she didn't appear to be wise to the use of "jughandles" in the State of New Jersey either.  If I were from Zimbabwe perhaps and driving for the first time in New Jersey, I surely would have been killed the first time I attempted to make a left hand turn off a major highway per Samantha's directives.  Luckily, however, we know how to get home off the parkway exit to our town or we might still be driving around aimlessly in search of a left hand turn off a major highway.

So, instead of yelling at each other, we now yell at Samantha Garmin.  I think my husband and I are going to mutually retain a lawyer and divorce her.  Suddenly, we don't look so bad to the other.

I don't understand this technology.  First of all, men don't like getting directions.  It's beneath or beyond them, I'm just not sure which it is.  They like to believe that they have an internal compass that gives them some sort of a natural ability to automatically know where they're going and they're all too often proud to admit otherwise.  They also manage to twist things around and claim that WE "screwed up" the way when we told them to make some turn four miles back, so invariably, we get the blame for how they became lost.  As a trailer driver for UPS, you would think my husband has some idea of where he's going, but admittedly he says he has "no sense of direction."  So, why does he argue with me so much over directions when I do have a sense of direction and I have a compass on my rearview mirror that I often rely on (successfully, I may add) and I've taken the time to map out our trip and print out the results that I read off to him??  Secondly, men don't listen to women, that's a known fact.  It's inherently so, unlike some internal compass they believe they possess.  No, what they do have is an internal switch off where they just don't listen to us.  Thus, I cannot fathom why on earth the makers of the GPS would put a woman's voice on the damn device. 

Personally, I think they should have used William Shatner's voice.  My husband would listen to him, especially if he told us to engage at warp speed.  At the very least, Sulu.  "Stay the course, Captain."  I hope the GPS systems used by NASA and our military are better at giving directions than Samantha Garmin, that's all I can say.  She's an idiot and I think I'm beginning to detect a little attitude.  She is not helping the plight of women.  She's making it worse from what I can see.  I'm just trying to figure out the psychology behind the makers using a woman's voice.  Did they want women to think they had a friend?  While Samantha may take the heat off of things, becoming the scapegoat, I see that it only fuels men's dismissive relationship with women in general.  "You're a woman, what do you know about directions?  It's men who explored the earth and discovered new land, not women."  "Yeah, and Columbus thought he'd found India when he discovered America and Ponce deLeon thought he found the Fountain of Youth, so shut the hell up, Copernicus."  When Samantha Garmin can respond like that, then I know we women not only have a friend, but we have won the battle against men and directions.