L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

Falling for Antonio - Pt. 1

June 29, 2008 on 10:46 am | In General Musing, Travel |

His voice was deep, firm, insistent.

“Dé vuelta a la izquierda.”

I could only obey and trust him to guide me to the end. And hope this sick obsession was never discovered.

It started innocently enough. A gift from my parents. They had just purchased a new Garmon GPS navigator for their RV, Roadzilla, and no longer needed their old Tomtom GPS. I resisted using it for weeks. My husband wanted to give it the boot. I wasn’t ready to park it on the dash, but eventually, idle curiosity got the better of me.

It’s a seductive thing, a GPS device. Even my husband’s curiosity was revved, though he insisted on suspension of the voice feature. That’s when I discovered the sad truth that it doesn’t actually drive the car. You have to look at it every now and then and note where the green arrow is pointing.

So we navigated to the menu and saw that there was a fleet of voices to choose from. Mike immediately opted for Katherine. French, it said. Ooh la la! I’m sure he expected a sweet ride from a coquette. Instead, we got Sister Katherine. You could practically hear the slap of the ruler in the palm of her hand as she imperiously instructed us to tournez à droite. I didn’t want to find out what might happen if I didn’t comply.

I searched the menu in vain for Barry White.

It’s not like I need a GPS. Most of the time I’m going places I’ve been to before. But there it sits in mute authority and you start to wonder… Have I been doing it wrong all this time? Could it be better?

I started using it more. Just out of curiosity, mind you. Was my route to the store really the most efficient? Would it trip up and send me on some wild journey far from my destination? Could I learn to speak a foreign language while driving? That’s when I decided to try Antonio. Brush up the old español. Little did I know how surrendering to his confident commands would get my engine purring.

“Usted está acercando a su destinación.”

Sí, Antonio.

To be continued…

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