Everyone’s afraid of something. I once met a plastic surgeon who was so deathly afraid of spiders, that he called his wife to come home from work to deal with the creepy crawly. I know a woman who didn’t shower for a year after seeing Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, PSYCHO. I assume she bathed, but I was too polite to ask, since she didn’t smell that bad.
I have a fear of getting lost. It is related to my extremely poor sense of direction. I would have made a lousy homing pigeon. When I was a little girl, I got lost riding my tricycle around the block from my house. I found myself in alien territory, turned around, and peddled back to where I had come from as fast as my little legs could take me.
Driving is okay if I recognize a landmark. But if the city elders decide to tear down a building, I have no idea where I am. Consequently, my son insisted that I purchase a GPS system. I got the one they advertize as, “It recognizes your favorite routes. Like an old friend.” Well, none of my old friends yell at me like the miniature tyrant trapped in that little box. I drove up my driveway, and that woman was still screaming “Recalculating!” “Recalculate all you want, Honey,” I replied as I lowered the garage door.
When I told my son what had happened he said, “It’s the satellite. I’ll come and update your system.” He didn’t acknowledge my response when I said, “Can I just connect to a different satellite?” So, now, on occasion, I still take the little woman in the box with me when I go somewhere. I like talking to her. She’s smarter than many of the talking heads on television, and she has the good sense to change her mind.
So, now, I am not so terribly afraid of getting lost in town, but I have a deathly fear that my GPS system will steer me into the forest one day, and I will either drive off a cliff, or witness that erectile dysfunctional man, and his girlfriend, from the television ad, sitting in two bathtubs in the middle of the woods. I guess they saw PSYCHO.
Esther Blumenfeld (on my way to somewhere)