And I hate her! She drives me crazy. I want to throw her out the window or smash her on the ground.
Why do I hate her?
My husband listens to her, he trusts her. He trusts her more than me. She contradicts me and he listens to her. It’s so frustrating. I want to scream, “But I’m your wife, you’ve only known her for half of a year.” But I don’t.
I know he needs her. A bit. Seriously though, all the time? I don’t think so.
Who is this horrible interloper in my marriage?
Her name is Garmin. Yep, the fabulous GPS voice that comes out of a little box that tells my husband how to get to where he is going. She used to talk with a British accent, which was the setting my husband had it on. (Of course, he picked the British setting.) She mispronounced street names so now the “other woman” in our lives talks with an American accent. She still can’t pronounce street names correctly.
You see, before we moved here the husband said he’d have to get a GPS. I tried to explain that Detroit was laid out like a grid. Well, a grid with wagon wheel spokes. I showed him maps and pointed out that the mile roads run east and west. I assured him it was easy.
And to be fair, he has done amazingly well tooling around Detroit and getting places. I mean, imagine if you were plunked down in a place you barely knew with different driving rules and customs. It’s not easy. Names of places don’t really mean anything to him; he doesn’t have the same reference points we do.
Oddly, he does know where every Lowe’s, Ace, and Home Depot are within a 15 mile radius.
So, I try and get along with Little Miss Garmin. But sometimes she gives really craptastic directions. Sometimes he listens to those directions over mine, which drives me crazy. That’s when I want to punch her.
Many times I’ll concede that she is actually leading him in the right direction and then he doesn’t do as he’s told. “Stay right on I-75 and take exit blah blah blah,” she’ll say. A few minutes later, when we haven’t exited, I get blamed for not reinforcing her wishes.
I guess I can’t win. As much as I hate her, I have come to terms with her being in our lives. She even helped me once when I knew I was within spitting distance of a location but couldn’t find the exact address. I secretly plugged her in and she got me to where I was going. Shh, that’s our little secret.