Well we’re back after a nice long weekend and this is a special week because it lacked a Monday! That’s right we skipped right over Monday and went straight to Tuesday, do not pass go, do not collect $200. So, on the day that would have been Monday but which was, instead, Labor Day, I took a little trip to Tampa because my geek sister insisted on watching the new Star Trek movie on a bigger screen, as in an IMax screen. Apparently a normal theater doesn’t have a screen big enough to fit a movie as big as Star Trek. I imagine in an IMax you can actually see the wax inside Leonard Nemoy’s pointy ears.
Disturbing thought, I know.
Anyway, I like the movie and all that but not enough to watch it on a screen where the US Enterprise is actually life size. So I dropped her off and went my merry way to the bookstore, mall, etc. This was my first trip using a little device with which I am sure most of you are well acquainted. It is called a GPS and it has a cool touch screen that shows you exactly where you are lost. Because you don’t want to have to keep looking at the screen of your GPS while you’re driving because it would distract you from that text message your’re sending, the device also has a voice that tells you when to turn and which way to turn.
“In point 3 miles, make a left turn.”
Even more amazing, it will talk to you in whatever language you understand best! When I got it it was talking Spanish: “Hacer un giro a la derecha y continuar seis millas.”
But I am Cuban and it knows it, smart little bastard, so next thing I know it’s talking Cuban: “Oye asere! Vira aqui mijito que nos vamo a dar tremenda perdia. Cuidao con el conten comemierda!”
I was astounded! I wanted to know what other languages it could do. So I told it I was from Hialeah. Sure enough: “Mira, aqui en this corner me haces un left y ten cuidado because este street es one way. Mira that hijoeputa cut you off. Give him the finger.”
It’s truly an amazing device. Or so I thought.
I told it to take us home and I, being so trusting, naively assumed it would take us back the way we came. Well the GPS was still in Hialeah mode so it went” “Mira, take your route y shove it up your culo.” And it proceeded to give us a guided tour of the darkest, most desolate roads every built by man. For a while it was fine, and then I make a couple of turns and realize the street lights are gone. This is never a good sign. Soon after that ALL the lights are gone. No city lights, no house lights, no even a bum with a cigarette lighter.
This, my friends, is how good horror movies start. I know, because I have watched a lot of them and they all started playing back at once in my head, “Wrong Turn”, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, “Night of the Living Dead”, “The Hills Have Eyes” although in Florida it would have to be called, “The Orange Groves Have Eyes”.
And while I am recounting every horror ever done to a lost traveler in a movie, we are driving down a road that is literally pitch black dark except for my trusty headlights, and where the last car we passed was twenty minutes ago. And next to me the GPS is going “Please continue driving for thirty miles.”
Are you kidding me? In twenty miles we will all have been killed by Jason, Freddie, Leatherface, Mike Meyers, Jigsaw and Dick Cheney. My ears will be hanging from some crazy hillbilly’s necklace and my skin will be part of his camping tent. Actually, with me they could probably make the whole tent, but let’s not go there. And just when I thought things could not get any creepier, the moon shows up… and it’s BLOOD RED! Hiding behind some creepy werewolf movie clouds in the horizon. And my GPS is still guiding me… “Please stay on this road for ten more miles or until captured and boiled alive by a band of mutant Amazonian cannibals, whichever comes first.”
Sadly we did not have the appropriate soundtrack to go with the situation, which I imagine would have to have been a recording of a question & torture session by an inquisitor in a medieval dungeon… maybe to the rhythm of Monster Mash. Lacking any such horrors to listen to, we had to settle for the next best thing, Jonas Brothers.
Well obviously we made it home eventually, all in one piece and without having to fight off a mob of starving Alabama zombies but I’ll be damned if I ever take directions from a GPS unit again, specially one who can talk spanglish. “You have arrived at your casa, pendejo. Next time, stick to the puñetero mapa.”
Originally Published 09/08/2009