Dan's Papers - June 27, 2008

I have a very fancy car that has, among many other do-dads (like a flip-down TV player, button that pins the sideview mirror ears against the door for going through tight spots, backup beep warning, tire pressure monitor), a navigation system. It is really neat, if you have somebody in the car who knows how to make it go. But that's not me.

The other day, I drove to a party on a side street way down at the end of Hands Creek Road to Alewife Brook Road in East Hampton. I know where these people live, so that's not the problem. The problem is that when I drive, I sometimes like to listen to the comedy shows on the satellite radio that this car comes with. I know how to turn that on. You press the "on" button. And not only do you hear a very funny comedian, but you get, right on the screen, the name of the channel, the name of the comedian and the name of the routine he is doing. The one I was listening to said the topic was GRANDPA.

"......so I said to Grandpa, it's not how you make it, it's how AS SOON AS PRACTICAL, MAKE A U TURN." It was the navigation lady. Followed by laughter at the grandpa joke.

"Okay, okay," the comedian said. "Thank you very much."

As I said, I am no computer wizard, but I knew immediately what was going on here. The last time I was in the car, which was the day before, I had a friend with me who had used the navigation system. We had traveled all over the East End, to Sag Harbor, to Southampton, to Shinnecock. And he kept punching in destinations, and when we got to one, he did another. It's all bundled together - the navigation system, the satellite radio, the FM/AM radio and the CD player - and you can have two or three on at a time. He'd never turned the damn navigation system off.

As I continued toward where I was going, the comedian kept talking and the navigation lady kept talking. It was the strangest thing. The comedian was really, really funny and I wanted to hear every word that he said. Meanwhile, the navigation lady was clearly desperate. There might be three or four minutes of the comedian uninterrupted, and then suddenly the navigation lady would burst in. IN ONE HALF-MILE, TURN LEFT. It was like you're having a very nice conversation with somebody, and every once in a while this very annoying and ill-mannered person would burst in, trying to get you to do something. She was annoyed I would not turn left. Certainly, I was annoyed with her.

I pulled over to the side of the road and tried to turn her off. I could turn the whole system off, I knew, but then I wouldn't hear the comedian. There had to be a way to shut her up. I pressed various buttons.

I really thought I had her at one point. I'd found a way to turn the comedian down, and she didn't say anything for a while. Then I turned the comedian back up, and she still didn't say anything. The comedian was now talking about condoms.

"Did you notice that condoms now have an expiration date on them?" he asked. Everybody laughed. I put the car in gear and moved forward, back down the narrow road I was on. "Well, let me tell you something. And this is really funny. If you believe in TURN LEFT IN ONE-HALF MILE, THEN MAKE THE NEXT LEGAL U-TURN. So I thought, how do I know where I'll be in June 2010?"

I gave up. It was a long drive to where I was going. As I drove, two emotions came over me. One was hope. I just hoped and hoped that whatever she had to say would not be said when there was a punchline. Sometimes it wasn't. And sometimes it was. There was a slight dimming of the comedian's volume just before she would begin to speak, as if she were taking over the microphone, so at least I had some advance warning. It sort of softened the blow.

The other emotion was that I was really, really getting upset at this woman's desire to get me back on track to where she was supposed to lead me. I wished I could remember the last destination my friend set up. If I listened to her closely, maybe I could figure it out. It was, clearly, a destination west and south of where we were. As I went north and east, she kept urging me to head south and west. She had crafty ways. Turn here and you can go around the block. Go ahead 2.1 miles and there's Swamp Road, and you can turn west there.

I went to the party. I wasn't much fun. "Something bothering you?" somebody asked me. "No," I said. But it was a lie.

After the party, on the way down the gravel driveway to the car, I remembered that the day before the navigation lady had periodically said we had arrived at the destination, and that the navigation system was turning itself off.

What I'd do, I thought, was re-set the navigation destination to where I was. Then, since we had arrived at this destination, it should shut her up.

I got in the car and pressed some buttons to try to do this. I tried and tried. I was getting nowhere. And then, suddenly, something came up on the computer screen that made my heart leap. It was a slide bar with two words above it. NAVIGATION VOLUME, it said. At one end of the bar was a circle with the word "louder" under it. At the other end of the bar was a circle with the word "softer" under it. There was a vertical thing along the bar. I touched it and could make it move. I took it all the way over to softer.

And I haven't heard her since.

It's been four days now. I know she's in there, still trying to get me over to Southampton or Sagaponack or somewhere, because none of my computer-literate friends have been in the car yet.

You know the words to Peter and the Wolf? Where, at the end, as the hunters march proudly home, if you listen very hard, you can hear the duck quacking softly in the wolf's belly?

I imagine her, maybe 55 years old, inside my dashboard, a piece of tape across her mouth, still politely urging me to make the next available U-Turn.