Learning to Drive

Perhaps I should start by saying with age my driving has improved as I realised getting from A to B did not require GTE to be stapled to the backside of a car and "go faster" stripes may result in "go slower" scratches.

So GPS is a wonderful thing that has saved me from reading a map for many a year now, or made me as lazy as tub of lard to bother to plan a road trip. I have found the most ridiculous location known to any in-sensible housing planner, courtesy of the GPS.

GPS is a good thing, that is in general a good thing.

So I now drive in automatic in a manual car, as the GPS lady tells me, nay, orders me to 'Turn Right' in various metres and to 'Bear Right' even when I was unaware there was a verb "To bear". I understand her ~Miss GPS~ as if she was a trusted confidante. I am her servent to her all-knowing satellite view of all things called Traffic congestion avoidance.

So today, I am the designated driver because I am Dad, my teenagers sit there and look upon the chauffeur as a necessary evil, although sunglasses are worn and sunscreens may need to drawn down in case a friend sees them with the Oldie.

It is a sad day to see children so uncomfortable in comfortable passenger seats. I am the nearest that God could have created to a Teenage Anti-Christ figure, apparently.

So I am on the road, maxing out to the speed limit and watching the boy racers pass me by, although several drivers in brief glimpses looked middle aged.

So I am bearing right as she has ordained, when Miss GPS goes walkabout and "New Routes" me to nowhere. She is preparing clourful hexagons becoming stick insects to God knows where, but Dad knows, not where Dad wants to go. I want instruction.

Nightmare on Several Exit street is had.

Miss GPS is in a tiz, she is old like me, we are mutually befuddled. Our simbiotic relationship is breaking down, man-machine interface is reduced to "What the's". I am a senile old man talking to the GPS ~ a machine ~ in very negative way and she is no "Miss" anymore, unless we are talking about missing a road network.

So this is a new road network, or as I probably re-christened it as a *****!!!!-ing new road ****!!!ing network, or words to that effect. Panic and old age plays trouble with any memory that I may appear more teenager than the teenagers, especially in front of the teenagers. Full body adult tantrum is out there like starship in deep space.

Roundabouts appear like magic mushrooming from a real world but disapperaing from the virtual world of GPS. This is an AAAaaaargh moment.

So the kids are losing faith in my driving and next it will be religion, well there may be some hope there.

Brave driving decisons are being made, if my swearing is anything to go by. We survive, as I turn back to the "Boy Racer" years and instinct hunts down exits, as if they are an endangered species. I have a mission to save the road network equivalent of a Dodo, as in "do do" exit safely.

So finally as frayed teenage nerves are re-energised from their mild paralysis and the cerebal cortex re-adjusts to cricked vertebrae. Teenagers may be reconsidering their "No fear" slogan as a way of life. Fear comes whether you like it or not.

I am put in my "Grand Theft Auto" place as my teenager drily notes I believe "Drift Right" is not in the GPS vocabulary. Neither is "Make a hand-brake Turn if you dare" a software road rage inducing law of Highway coding.

Ho hum.... learning to drive lessons may be needed before I teach teenagers to learn to drive.