A few evenings ago, I discovered that driving when I am following the directions of an app on a phone makes me anxious. I don’t think it started that evening. That’s just when I understood that it was happening. Driving along a route that I am unfamiliar with doesn’t necessarily make me anxious. It’s being at the mercy of an app, being at the mercy of that lady computer voice that makes me anxious.
I have driven many places without an app to guide me. I have driven long trips across several states and short trips through a town or to a spot in the woods without an app to guide me. I was less anxious about that. I remember a trip, in the spring of 1995, from Pennsylvania to Cape Fear, North Carolina. At one point, we realized that we were in West Virginia. We weren’t supposed to be in West Virginia. It wasn’t a big deal. We didn’t panic. We sorted it out and got back onto the correct route.
There were a lot of things about this drive a few nights ago that were out of my normal. It started out with me driving through a city I’d never driven through while looking for a place I’d never been to. I was driving my wife’s vehicle, not mine. Once I ran this errand, at this place, I’d never been to, we were headed home but that would start out on a route I’d never taken.
I’ve driven her vehicle before. It’s called an SUV but it’s a car. It’s a unibody. It’s just a big car with all wheel drive. But it doesn’t drive big on the highway. It’s easy to maneuver and quick. It’s got one of those information touchscreens on the center console. I’m not sure that we’re better off with these screens. It’s fancy and it’s sci-fi, but it takes the driver’s eyes off the road longer than the old knobs and levers did. I needed the assistance of a co-pilot to help with defogging the windshield, etc. She was an excellent co-pilot. She even peeled back the aluminum foil from the wrap I ate for dinner so I could keep my eyes on the road and my hands on the wheel.
The vehicle didn’t make me anxious. The place I’d never been didn’t make me anxious. I went in alone and spoke to three different people who were all pleasant and polite. I got what I came for and more. It was a successful errand and I only have good things to say about it.
Seeing the map on the phone screen, having the touch screen center console, having the app ask me if I wanted to save eight minutes by changing the route mid-stream (Yes, I wanted to save eight minutes. We were already going to be arriving home past the kids’ bedtimes. I wanted those eight minutes.) are all very sci-fi, future is here now things. I always think of that stuff as being from Buck Rogers. It’s not Star Trek or Star Wars for me, it’s Buck Rogers (I wonder if I’d still like that show if I watched it now). We are living with the crazy gadgets of science fiction.
The map app is not from the future. It’s not even a new thing anymore. But it still makes me anxious.
Once we got to a road we knew, we turned the app off. We knew the way home, I had eaten my wrap, I was used to driving this vehicle again, and the kids might or might not have been asleep. Kid 1 was alseep. Kid 2 might have been in and out of sleep. Anxiety over. We were cruising. We had been listening to the Dead but I changed it up. I tried to listen to a couple of songs that were new by a couple of artists that I didn’t know. I was disappointed, but then we got a few good songs in a row: “Everybody Wants Some” by Van Halen, a demo version of “Young Lust” by Pink Floyd and a few songs later some live Led Zeppelin. Early Van Halen before 1984 is good. That started a good run of songs for us.
But the anxiousness is what got me writing about this. Why the anxiousness? I used to have an idea of how I was going to get to where I was going before I left. Before I started the trip, I’d look at a map and check out the route. Maybe there’d be construction or a detour but I would still already have an idea in my head of which way to go. Now I’m lazy because of these apps so I have no idea where I’m headed or what to expect. And sometimes the apps are just wrong. They get confused and send me in the wrong direction. And it’s easy to miss a turn. The app calls a 90 degree turn a “slight right”. I think it was more enjoyable when I knew where I was going and I was just looking for road signs or the next marker or turn. Listening for the app voice to tell me what to do is more stressful.
Anyway, it was a good drive home. The anxiety only lasted as long as I was dependent upon the app and this time it didn’t steer me wrong.