Column: That GPS was leading me to no good

Be honest. Has your GPS ever led you astray?

I’ve heard stories of people being led down the wrong road, being taken for a ride and ending up lost. That’s why I’ve steered away from using a GPS.

I like maps. I like holding them in my hands, seeing the big picture and all the surroundings. That way, when I get lost, I’ll know where I am.

Up until a few weeks ago, I never used a GPS. My sister gave me one. Maybe she was hoping I’d get lost.

I liked the GPS at first. It played nice. It lured me in. I began to trust it. Then, late one night, my husband and I were heading home from an unfamiliar location. We planned to reverse our Mapquest route to get home, but on a whim, we decided to experiment with the GPS.

It started out with an innocent turn, a few miles later, another turn, slightly different from our MapQuest route. Then, the GPS took us down a dark, windy road and demanded we turn right onto an even darker, fog encased road, in the middle of nowhere.

This road was straight out of a B horror movie. I’m sure there were zombies lurking, werewolves howling, and vampire bats licking their chops in anticipation of two people in a lone car.

“No way.” I said to my husband.

“We are not driving down there.”

My husband agreed. He changed course fast.

Maybe the GPS was mad about being left in a hot car for 10 hours, maybe it didn’t like being used or maybe it was jealous of my relationship with MapQuest. Or maybe, just maybe, it was not a Global Positioning System at all, but instead, it was a… Global People Strander.

This GPS was adamant about stranding us on that desolate road. It kept rudely interrupting our conversation, ordering us to turn, chattering about recalculating the route, trying to fool us into thinking it would lead us home. And then, it went blank, blinking and begging for more power and more charge.

More power to trick me? More charge to eavesdrop? I don’t think so. I unhooked that thing and stuffed it in the glove compartment. By this time, we needed a charge. We found civilization, stopped for water, a snack and got back on track, the MapQuest way.

GPS, you’re outta here. You just lost yourself a friend, one that was willing to take you in and trust you. You can go find someone else to strand.

This story was originally published September 4, 2015 at 12:10 PM with the headline "Column: That GPS was leading me to no good."