Not Quite a Technophobe, but Close

It was not just the trip that our family took to Ligonier that started my fear and disdain for technology or the dangerous commercial addictions and misguided actions of both consumer and maker alike, it started about the same time that I first read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 way back in Center Junior High School.

We were to meet friends in Ligonier - a quaint town though being a sleepy lil' village (which we needed), seemed hipper than most western Pennsylvania towns. We had gone only a month prior to one of the local and very well-known fun parks, which too had showed a knack for being really cool without the modern hoopla and over-abundance of mechanical enhancements, indeed some spots were rickety enough to cause some consternation on an otherwise thrill seeking man, such as myself.

We borrowed a GPS from my parents, a wide-screened piece of equipment which if plugged and programmed properly could probably take you through the wildest parts of town through the bitterest traffic patterns very easily - and it did just that.

"The lady" - that is to say the digital voice from inside the system bid me hello with a happy little "ding", which must have resulted from some Pavlovian understanding, because as soon we heard that "ding" sound, my wife and I immediately shut our conjoined brains down. And the lady sent us careening down route 65 towards Pittsburgh in Friday construction traffic at an approximate speed of 5 miles per hour.

In my head, only five minutes into the trip, I am uttering phrases and epitaphs that could only be described as coming from a Tarentino movie, because I realize that I could have hopped onto a road that would have very easily taken us out of the hell that we (the lady and I) put ourselves into.

"What are we doing?"

Grumble. Grumble.

"Why is she taking us this way?"

Grumble. Snort. "Duh. I dunno-."

My wife - the woman I love that most, the flesh of my flesh, my best friend - found my short fuse, and I, in turn, found hers, because I was cheating on her with a GPS system that after enduring the biggest, snarling beast of a bottle neck in suburban Pittsburgh, in an automobile whose very structure may well bounce into oblivion was thought to be infallible in my dullard state of being.

"She knows all - duh."

A one and half hour trip to a weekend of rest in a Mayberrian Utopia with close friends. The children, prior to getting in the car, were bouncing pleasantly in the evening sun, filled with colors of the on coming evening. All gathered at a feast, reserved at the local 4-star restaurant. All this in my vivid imagination, but in truth the hours ticked by with unadulterated speed and my boiling point was reached.

"ETA 7 VIA GPS." My wife texted to her friend, already in Ligonier basking in the grapy glow of a sultry red wine.

Texting. More texting.

I remained hot and quiet.

"Change the reservations for dinner?"

Text.

What ever happened to actually talking to one another?

Then it hit me. After finally making it through the Monroeville tunnel with angry people listening to their radios, their GPS, their talking texts, my wife and I realized that we could have looked at the map or even better, could have talked to someone - our friends who have been there numerous times, and then we realized that they - two very intelligent individuals - did the same damn thing; they plugged in their GPS. They shut down their brains as though dogs salivating at the sound of a bell. They wished their children asleep with music and texting and "the lady" to guide them into the same stupid drive-home-traffic.

Keep in mind we've been there. They have been there numerous times. An hour and half - TOPS.

No one talks anymore. They fear their own intelligence or a potential challenge to it by someone else, by feigning interest in it claiming they are too busy. Texting is a way to commune how much we are afraid to go into deeper water with someone. I married my wife and kept the TV off because we both like the high-dive in the deep end. If we want to be careful in a subject of discussion, we stay out of it until we are ready, or we wade in, shallow side first into the deep end – always.

 part 2