My dad picks me up at the airport on Friday. He has a new car with one of those GPS route trackers in it.
He presses a button, and a robotic woman's voice starts talking in French. Apres 2 kilometres, veuillez tourner ... a gauche.
"See!" Dad says, very proud of this discovery. " It tells me the directions ... in French!"
I hesitate to point out that Dad doesn't ... speak French.
"Of course, it can also tell you the route in English -- and several other languages." He presses a button. The same voice intones, "In one ... mile ...turn ...left." It's a woman's voice, but the phrasing is very Captain Kirk. In fact, I wish they'd gotten William Shatner to do the voice over for this device. I'm sure he could have broken away from the Priceline commercials for an hour or two.
"For the love of God, man ... Turn ... left in 1.2 miles!"
This tracking system, which seems to involve enough technology to launch a rocket to Mars, might be very helpful if Dad ever went anywhere in the car that he hasn't been driving to for at least 35 years. But I don't want to burst his bubble.
For that matter, I'm not sure why my dad needs to have an SUV. It's not like he has 5 kids, or needs to haul a boat, or drives up to the top of an off-road mountain peak to have a ram, or some other horned animal, gaze admiringly at his 4-wheel drive.
"It's good for when I, uh, you know, go fishing," Dad asserts. To his credit, my dad and his friends do go fishing about once a year, often in Alabama or Colorado or one of these places. I don't bring up the fact that he usually flies to the destination and then rents a car (undoubtedly some non-SUV). He doesn't even own a fishing pole, because it's easier and probably cheaper to just rent the stuff once a year.
My parents do have the suburban habit of buying everything in bulk, so the SUV does come in handy for that. In the garage, we have cases upon cases of random household supplies. It's as if they're preparing for some international toilet paper shortage. And we have enough mayonnaise to survive a nuclear apocalypse. Which is interesting, because one jar of mayonaise tends to last my folks for at least one presidential administration. Sometimes two.
The idea of buying in bulk is utterly foreign to most of us who live in New York City, where every item really has to justify taking up space. "Hmmm ... the urn with grandma's remains? Well, it is taking up 6 inches, and seeing as how we're paying $10 a month per square foot, well ..."
I'm joking, of course. Most people in Manhattan pay much more than $10 a square foot.
He presses a button, and a robotic woman's voice starts talking in French. Apres 2 kilometres, veuillez tourner ... a gauche.
"See!" Dad says, very proud of this discovery. " It tells me the directions ... in French!"
I hesitate to point out that Dad doesn't ... speak French.
"Of course, it can also tell you the route in English -- and several other languages." He presses a button. The same voice intones, "In one ... mile ...turn ...left." It's a woman's voice, but the phrasing is very Captain Kirk. In fact, I wish they'd gotten William Shatner to do the voice over for this device. I'm sure he could have broken away from the Priceline commercials for an hour or two.
"For the love of God, man ... Turn ... left in 1.2 miles!"
This tracking system, which seems to involve enough technology to launch a rocket to Mars, might be very helpful if Dad ever went anywhere in the car that he hasn't been driving to for at least 35 years. But I don't want to burst his bubble.
For that matter, I'm not sure why my dad needs to have an SUV. It's not like he has 5 kids, or needs to haul a boat, or drives up to the top of an off-road mountain peak to have a ram, or some other horned animal, gaze admiringly at his 4-wheel drive.
"It's good for when I, uh, you know, go fishing," Dad asserts. To his credit, my dad and his friends do go fishing about once a year, often in Alabama or Colorado or one of these places. I don't bring up the fact that he usually flies to the destination and then rents a car (undoubtedly some non-SUV). He doesn't even own a fishing pole, because it's easier and probably cheaper to just rent the stuff once a year.
My parents do have the suburban habit of buying everything in bulk, so the SUV does come in handy for that. In the garage, we have cases upon cases of random household supplies. It's as if they're preparing for some international toilet paper shortage. And we have enough mayonnaise to survive a nuclear apocalypse. Which is interesting, because one jar of mayonaise tends to last my folks for at least one presidential administration. Sometimes two.
The idea of buying in bulk is utterly foreign to most of us who live in New York City, where every item really has to justify taking up space. "Hmmm ... the urn with grandma's remains? Well, it is taking up 6 inches, and seeing as how we're paying $10 a month per square foot, well ..."
I'm joking, of course. Most people in Manhattan pay much more than $10 a square foot.
posted by Marguerite at 9:28 AM
1 Comments:
We have an SUV. We drive it exactly eight days out of the month. Okay, not exactly. Sometimes we drive it for the pure sake of driving it because we are making payments on the thing. It may as well get some use. We have it because of the large number of children we have, but they're only all together about eight days out of the month.
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