Romancing New England's Roads, Or There's No G,P or S in Romance

I wish Garmin gave me options. Why can't my GPS voice seduce me into keeping right or entering roundabouts? Make it a man with a slight accent, like a spy or a butter spokesman, so it feels like an intimate encounter each time he leads me astray. Then I'd be less likely to curse him when he drags me under Boston Harbor and abandons me like a mangy stray or has me making donuts in Providence that would put the fifteen million Dunkin Donut franchises in New England to shame.

He might offer more than "arriving at destination" when I passed the TAPS office in Warwick, Rhode Island, enough times to be categorized as a crazy-stalker fan. He might have said, "Look, over there. The suburbans block it, but it is there. Do you trust me?" He might have praised my ability to parallel park in Boston instead of insisting where I'd gone wrong. He might have understood my complete and total devotion to him at the exemption of all other navigation tools and how a belly full of lobster and butter sedated my most basic situational awareness. The nowhere, Maine streets had no lights, but it wouldn't matter. He would be the Columbus to my Pollyanna in a plastic bib.

He might have pulled me aside and explained to me what the hell a roundabout was and why Plymouth drivers are so quick to shoot the native bird. Was it the New York plates? Did the whole Yankees/Red Sox thing extend to the region's very infrastructure? I'm sure our Pilgrim ancestors would have swelled with pride as I, a mere refugee from the genteel South, showed my bird prowess as well.

Instead, Garmin gives me a pushy pitchwoman with a "recalculating" stutter. There would be more romance in Fantasia's voice, but together we conquered four states in nine days and she did work through the adversity of ancient rock, a NPR show on bedbugs, and Hootie-no-more-a-blowfish, ad nauseum.

Tomorrow: Romancing the Yankee Accent: The Language of Seduction