Global Positioning Angel

There was only one thing I wanted for my birthday and it was a thing so all-powerful I scarce dared speak its name: In the worst way I wanted a Global Positioning System for my car.

Because I travel a lot, peddling the fairy-dust that is my kind of writing.

And it’s hard enough to drive 300 miles to some newspaper in some far-flung burg and be told "Sorry" but to then be lost on twisty roads, in winter darkness as you struggle to find your way back to the Interstate, well let’s just say it was all starting to get to me.

So when my kids asked me what I wanted this year I told them the truth: a GPS I said. And they reached deep in their pockets and with major funding from the Dad Foundation they God bless ‘em bought me one.

At first I literally quaked in its presence and finally sought the mediating help of the priestly caste, in this case my local service station’s father-son team of Nick and Michael who have helped me navigate so many other dark nights of the soul, automotively speaking.

Michael is a younger male, so of course his face lit right up at the sight of a dandy new gizmo.

"Let me take her home and hook her up to my computer, see what else she can do," he said with a big happy smile. I was delighted to let him; I was scared to be alone with the thing to be perfectly honest.

"Pull your car right into the bay here," he said the following day when I returned back to the station. "We’ll stick her up on the dash and watch what happens."

So I pulled into the bay and a whole gang of males suddenly assembled by my windows, Michael leaning in on the passenger side and four other guys who work there gathered right beside me in the driver’s seat, all lined up to catch the performance.

"OK. Press the ‘On’ button," Michael said.

I did. A question appeared on the gizmo’s tiny face.

"Male or female?" it said.

I thought it meant me. "Female," I tapped.

"Lori or Mandy?" it then asked.

"Oh wait, I get it!" I said, girl-genius that I am. "You can CHOOSE what gender ‘angel’ you want talking to you! See, they have guy voices too!"

"No, pick Mandy! We like Mandy!" one of the fellas joked.

"Should I ask her to describe what she’s wearing?" I joked back.

But really. It doesn’t need clothes, this supreme being who speaks to you in angel voices. It is a disembodied, virtual version of some prophet of old and it speaks for the Satellite-in-the-Sky.

And its all-seeing Eye I have come almost to worship. 

If my car needs fuel, it points out gas stations. If I do, it directs me to a restaurant. It maketh me lie down in green pastures. It restoreth my soul.

Even if I make a mistake it preserves a tolerant silence and only after a hundred or so yards suggests that a U-turn might be helpful. And talk about your unconditional love, if I continue on my same path of error, it accepts me still and tries guiding me from there!

It has the very hairs on my head counted. It sees me in my going out and in my coming in. It watches even as I turn from Main Street onto Maple. And I swear I will never take for granted the gift of Its escort, through all the Ages of Ages Amen.