What is it about men that makes some of them drive clear to
Timbuktu before they’ll admit that they are lost?
What is it about men that makes some of them drive clear to Timbuktu before they’ll admit that they are lost? It must be a weird man gene or something, because I’ll tell you, we women don’t set off for the mall and end up in Alaska. We stop the minute we realize that we’re lost. We ask for directions. And we never, ever feel shame about this.
A man, on the other hand, will get in a car in Gilroy for a quick trip to Hollister. He’ll then drive south until he reaches Baja California and when the road finally ends, he’ll stop – but not to ask for directions. Instead, he’ll take a dinner break before figuring out a way to get back to California without his family discovering that he’s crossed the border.
And my dad is one of those guys.
So, my mom got him a GPS navigation doo-hickey. And my father completely ignores it, even though he needs it. Look, this is a man who has been to my home many times. And yet, when he first got the GPS, he got confused in the traffic at the Pacheco Y and ended up driving to Moss Landing instead of Gilroy.
And yes, the GPS was telling him where to go. And no, it wasn’t to Moss Landing.
But we still allow Dad to be the driving leader on road trips. It’s that whole “head of the family thing,” I think. Take last week, for example. After Christmas, we took a little trip to Southern California so Harry and Junior could race go-karts for a few days. And we took Mom and Dad with us.
We should have known something would go wrong. First of all, my dad insisted that Oxnard was only 3 hours from his central California home. In fact, he decided that since it was only a 3-hour drive, that he wouldn’t tow a car behind his RV, he’d just make me follow him.
Five hours later, we reached Southern California.
But the torture didn’t stop there. Instead we were treated to a tour of Southern California that included several cities, many, many Starbuck’s coffee drinks and lots of frantic phone calls between the two vehicles to say things like “for Pete’s sake, when will we get there?” And then, suddenly, we arrived. We were in Oxnard.
And that’s where the real fun began. You see, once we were there, we had to drive around for about an hour, looking for the RV park. By now, we were on hour seven of our 3-hour drive and I was beginning to feel like a reject from Gilligan’s Island.
And yet, I kept following Dad. I followed him through Oxnard. I followed him to an industrial park. I followed him on two different freeways. I even followed him past a Wal-Mart that had several slumbering RV dwellers happily parked in the parking lot. And I followed him to a very dark, very vacant lot.
In fact, every time we got to the vacant lot, Dad would turn his traveling home around – no easy feat let me tell you. But he eventually got very good at turning his rig around, mainly because he drove to the vacant lot and made a U-turn approximately 452 times.
Look, I’d love to tell you I’m kidding, but I’m not.
After a while, my mother got tired of this. She was in my car with me and honestly, I think all the lattes she’d consumed were making her a bit cranky. So when dad tried to make U-turn no. 453, she called him and did something that suspiciously resembled shrieking.
Turns out, the navigation device was telling dad to go to the vacant lot. And since the vacant lot clearly wasn’t our destination since it wasn’t an RV park, Dad kept turning around, going down the freeway and ending up back at the vacant lot.
It also turns out, that even though my dad managed to listen to the navigation system, he hasn’t actually learned to use it. Apparently, the vacant lot wasn’t our destination – but it was the address my dad had input into the system.
But once Dad realized that – and right before Mom started shrieking again – we made it to the RV Park and managed to get 15 minutes of sleep before we had to go to the go-kart track – which we discovered was right next to the vacant lot. I guess Mom’s not the only one who had too many lattes.
Laurie Sontag is a Gilroy writer and mom who wishes parenthood had come with instructions. Her column is syndicated. She can be reached at la****@la**********.com.
