My Love-Hate Relationship with Faith Hope
A simple trip to visit a friend recovering from surgery in a nursing home…and I’m lost…even with Faith Hope to guide me. Faith Hope is my semi-trusty Tom-Tom GPS and is so named for I “faithfully hope” she will unerringly guide me to my destination. Not so today.
“Turn around when possible.” She alerts me that I missed the left turn she said was in 300 feet.
Then she gives me the silent treatment as she flashes “recalculating” on the screen. Next, although her voice remains calm, I know snarky when I listen between the lines, she offers additional imprecise directions, “Take the next right, then turn right, and turn right again.”
Her subtext clearly means, “You idiot. I told you the first time to turn left in 300 feet and you whizzed right past it…This isn’t the first time you know.”
For those of us who are navigationally challenged, her offering the number of feet to the turn doesn’t help all that much. As for me, the “next turn” better not be a drive-way, alley, or cow-path as I will take it since it is the “next” turn possible.
It’s been awhile since I updated her, and judging by results, I think she is urinated-off about it or she would not have directed me to this dead end. She says my destination should be just ahead on my right. However, dead-ahead is a road-end barricade. Behind that and across a ginormous, hilly, rocky canyon, appears to be the outer edge of the nursing home property. Now, Faith Hope has connections to a satellite that can see a fleck of dust on a gnat’s derriere from outer space, so how hard can it be to see that this road ends here? I couldn’t cross that ravine with wings and a Hummer 4 x 4 to reach “destination on your right.”
I backed up, turned around, and she had the audacity to again say, “Turn around when possible.” Faith Hope would like me to go right back to the dead-end. Thanks, but no thanks. I drove out ignoring her edicts for several blocks.
She is recalculating again.
And, I can almost hear the heavy sigh and her lament, “I tell you, and I tell you, and I tell you, but you just don’t listen. I don’t even know why I try.”
I did my best to circumvent both returning to the dead-end and her directions trying to take me back to it. Finally, Faith Hope has decided to be helpful and this time her directions take me directly into the parking lot. “You’ve reached your destination.”
Faith Hope is all proud of herself. I believe she needs an attitude adjustment. So, I unplug her charger, and drop her into the dark center console where she can think about her actions as her battery drains.
