I Once Was Lost, I Now Am Hopeless

Happy anniversary to me! I got a new GPS today a little ahead of our forthcoming tenth anniversary road trip so that Emily and I can have an impartial tie-breaker for the many and often colorful arguments about which direction we are or should be going which are an absolute inevitability.
This GPS replaces my former GPS which was a wonderful item and I loved it. Someone else, loved it better than me, however and was beguiled enough by it enough to attempt to smash my window and get it. They were partially successful. they got my GPS. The window was laminated safety glass and had to literally be rolled in small sections until enough space was gained for the perp (or perps) could get into my car.
They left a legacy of broken glass in nooks and crannies of my car, a now seldom operational window switch and a forever marred trim piece around the glass that Ford Motor Company is clearly very proud of considering they want $400 to replace it.
Yes, I am that person in the drive through half leaning out his car through the open door looking like an idiot and getting rained on and snowed on with the car rolling forward because the extra step of putting it in park would be just too much.
It is a lush life.

The thief (or thieves) allowed a more enduring legacy continue... that of me being perpetually lost.
Never have I had a sense of direction. I still have to close my eyes a bit and envision a compass rose in my head to delineate East from West relative to my North or South. I don't even get this right much of the time. My dead reckoning skills are therefore poor at best.
I always go right. And where I want to go is left. So knowing this, sometimes sneak up to an intersection (because it is against me), turn on my right signal and floor it to the left. This of course to the chagrin of my passengers and those fellow drivers unlucky enough to be sharing any real-estate within my proximity.
Aha! Fooled it!
Wrong. If I went left, it was supposed to be right.
I get reminded of Kermit The Frog and Fozzy Bear singing Movin' right along from "The Muppet Movie"-
"Movin' right along- You take it you know best"
"Hey, I've never seen the sun come up in the west"
I didn't get that joke until I was 28 years old! I am utterly hopeless.
Strangely, the GPS helped, and hindered my quest for direction. It's sort of like a calculator. I am shocked at the number of people who will consult a calculator to add two simple numbers together. For me, it happens in my head without trying. In fact, even with decimals and numbers to the triple digits I can add subtract multiply and divide accurately in my head in about the same time as a calculator user can come up with the same answer. And I failed miserably in math in school and on all forms of standardized testing.
In fact, for a guy who reads and writes as much as I do and who worked at a major bookstore for five years like I did, you would be surprised to know I have to mentally run through the alphabet to know where a letter is in relation to another. But back to my sense of direction.
I still get lost using the GPS because I don't pay close enough attention to it. Or worse, I am paying my undivided attention to it and continuing to defy it because I know it is wrong!
It sounds so irritated with me as it repeats "recalculating" in that judgmental stern voice. It is even worse with a female voice. It sounds so much like nagging. "recalculating " it seems to say.
So, the miracle of GPS has not provided me a better sense of direction, nor has it cured my propensity to get lost. It, like every other gadget and distraction in life is not the ultimate answer to the problem.
I think my life lacks direction in general. Maybe when I grow up to be a big boy, my sense of direction will click and I will know where I am and where I am going and I will go boldly and confidently.
For now, the good news is that whatever direction I am going, I am more or less happy to be there. Life isn't a bowl of cherries, but I ate a bowl of cherries once and I am here to tell you the outcome was not pleasant and certainly not cherry scented.
Somebody should have warned me. Then again, maybe somebody did and I didn't listen. Just like I do with my GPS.
My wife says I can't put the home address in the thing, because the next thief will like my taste in GPS so much he or she or they, or whatever, will come to my house looking for more swag he or they may want. So, screw the people 3 houses to the south of me... because I used their address. I couldn't pick somewhere too far away or I'd never find my way home.