Dreaming of GPS voices from yesteryear
Photo by Ravi Palwe on Unsplash
After years of struggle, I’ve made some tentative peace with newfangled gimmickry.
I can deal with e-mail, voice mail, texting and Google. But there’s one 21st century presence that leaves me pining for days of yore: That woman who gives me directions via GPS.
You know her. If you tee up an address on your smartphone, she’s right there, snippy and snappy, ordering you to turn right at the next corner.
If you don’t? There’s a hint of menace in her tone. She is about as warm as my third-grade teacher was when she ordered us to line up for lunch.
It’s enough to make me hunt up paper maps (even if I could never re-fold them correctly).
The GPS lady could act as my partner. But she acts instead as my bad dream.
She gives me directions as if I’ve never driven, or turned right, before. She assumes that I’m a dunce. She over-prepares me for what’s obvious. She’s not my friend or my ally.
But she is the source of my latest million-dollar idea…
What if I could strip her voice out of my phone and substitute one that is more familiar, more agreeable and more in keeping with my generation? A voice from my/our childhood and adolescence?
Of course, no million awaits me for this brainstorm. Someone has already thought of this.
For the right price, you can load up Alicia Keys, Morgan Freeman and (on some phones) Donald Duck. They’ll give you directions with their inimitable cadences and their inimitable diction.
But, with the exception of Donald, none of those voices takes me back to the thrilling days of yesteryear. What if my GPS offered me…
Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “The only thing we have to fee-uh is failing to turn right at the next intersection.”
Tallulah Bankhead: “Dahhhhling! Would you please be an absolute love and turn right at the next corner?” Big smooches.
Edward G. Robinson: “Now listen, punk. You turn right at the next corner if you know what’s good for you, unnerstand?”
Yogi Berra: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it. Next right? That’s as good a fork as any.”
Desi Arnaz: “Lu-u-u-u-cy! I’m almost home! After I take the next right.”
Lyndon B. Johnson: “Mah fellow Americans, I love to drive my Lincoln Continental convertible around mah ranch. But ah always turn right at the next corner.”
Winston Churchill: “Never, ever, ever, ever give up preparing to turn right at the veddy next opportunity.”
Ronald Reagan: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall — and then turn right at the next corner.”
Marilyn Monroe: “Some like it hot, and it’s going to get rea-a-a-a-ly hot for you, babykins, if you don’t turn right at that corner coming up in 200 feet.”
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “I have a dream — and you can have one, too, if you’ll kindly turn right at the next corner.”
John Wayne: “You want to know what true grit truly feels like? Grab that steering wheel. Tap the brakes. Turn right. Easy, mister.”
Jerry Lee Lewis: “You’re not planning to turn right at the corner? Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire!”
I know, I know, the million-dollar check is in the mail. I’m prepared to fail. It wouldn’t be the first time.
But I can’t park this brainstorm without making it a little personal.
Bob Levey: “If you don’t turn right at the corner, I’ll write you up in the Beacon!”
Bob Levey is a national award-winning columnist.
