For people like me, who’s sense of direction is the stuff of legend, a GPS is a God-send. I have never had a sense of direction; and that defect has caused me humiliation, embarassment and frustration beyond words.
If I can see the sun, and know what time it is; I’m capable of guessing as well as the next person. But turn me loose in a neighborhood I’m unfamiliar with, and it may just as well be a maze containing a Minotaur. It is blind luck that gets me out, not skill of any sort.
So, when I go driving, I’m not ashamed to admit that I listen to my wife. She has a sense of direction and I do not. However, when I have the GPS, the GPS usually wins the ensuing arguement.
If I listened to my wife we would never get anywhere. I don’t know how many times this conversation has been repeated in our marriage:
Me: I’m turning right.
Wife: Why?
Me: Because that’s the way we need to go to get where we’re going.
Wife: Oh. I would have turned left.
Me: Why?
Wife: I don’t know.
It doesn’t have to be a new destination either. Many times it’s someplace we’ve been before but it doesn’t stick in her head.