Are We There Yet?
By Jim Shahin
 IF THERE IS one thing that a road warrior needs more than anything else — more than a limitless expense account; more than a big fat bonus for clocking all those hard miles; more,even, than non-wrinkle, non-stain shirts — it is a road companion. Just a soothing voice to say, “I’ve got your back; I’m here for you.”
That’s all.
As for me, I thought I had that companion.
Turns out I was wrong.
Her name? Not important. Things happen. I have my version; she has hers. I respect that.
What I will say is that when we met, I thought she was perfect.
Helpful. Cheerful. She didn’t talk a lot, but when she did, it meant something.
I listened.
Not only did I listen, but I also did what she said, and I was rewarded: She rarely steered me wrong.
Now?
Her voice grates.
We’re in the car together, and she is sometimes snippy, sometimes coldly silent.
At times, I even wonder why I take her along on these trips.
But I do.
Somehow, I think I still need her.
“In one-tenth of a mile,” she says, “at LivingstonStreet, turn left.”
At Livingston Street, I turn left.
And she is right. It is the thing to do.
She is almost always right.
Almost always.
And therein lies the problem.
Sometimes she’s not.
Maybe it is my high expectations of her.Maybe it is the way she is hardwired to convey an air of infallibility. Whatever it is, when she is wrong, or simply uncertain, things get testy.
I can’t explain it, and neither can she. But on occasion, she misreads the stars or the road or whatever it is that guides her. And when that happens, she gets miffed, as if it is my fault.
In those instances, if she says anything at all, her icy voice says but one word, and she draws it out, aggrieved exasperation dripping in her tone: “Recalculating.”
That’s it.
Not “Oops, you seem to have missed your turn. That’s okay. Just take the next left.” Or“Maybe you decided to take a different route. No problem. Try turning right onto Burlington Drive.”
Just “Recalculating.”
And I want to scream at her, “You know what? You act like you know everything.You pretend that you have this all-knowing, all-seeing knowledge, but you don’t. You sometimes get things wrong, too, you know.”
I want to jab my finger in the air and put the question to her, “Where are you in a parking garage? Huh? Nowhere, that’s where. ‘Accessing satellite,’ my patoot! You’re accessing nothing, that’s what you’re accessing. And then you blame me for turning the wrong way? ‘Recalculating.’ Recalculating? You never calculated in the first place. So you can’t be recalculating, now, can you, little miss high-and-mighty.”
But I don’t say anything, because I know what her answer would be. Worse, I know how she would answer — with that put-out tone in her voice, that miffed put-uponness,as if everything that needs to be said could be said in one, huffily uttered word.
“Recalculating.”
SOMETIMES I deliberately start a fight. I might, for example, drive past my destination on purpose. Does she say anything? Ask me what I am doing? Suggest I turn around?
No.
Silence.
As if to say, “I’ve tried to help you get to where you are going. If you don’t want to go there, fine. I can’t help you. I won’t help you.”
I’ll drive for blocks, wondering if she will ever say anything. She doesn’t.
She just lets me roam. Aimlessly, for all she knows. Lost. Needing her guidance.
“Guidance,” her silence seems to say. “You want guidance? You should have listened to me back there. If you don’t want to listen, there is nothing I can do.”
After a while, I end up feeling crummy, for I am just testing her, and she probably resents it. Who wouldn’t?
You could say that I have a way of pushing her buttons. It’s true; I do. Usually, though,and I don’t say this immodestly, I push them in a way that satisfies her and satisfies me.
Like I said, we started out very happy together.
I don’t think my misgivings are deep, and I don’t think her pique is insurmountable. I think we are just getting accustomed to each other’s limitations.
We are, after all, modern. We know that to adapt is to succeed.
I just sometimes wish that, in the global sense, we would not position each other to assume that we are the total answer to each other’s needs, or, to put it in a more contemporary sense, systems.
Adaptation is what it means to be a road warrior.
She knows. She has a word for it.
“Recalculating.”
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