SUNDAY WITH PHILOSOPHY JANE | We Turn the Radio Down When We’re Lost

By 12:47 on a perfectly ordinary Saturday afternoon, I reached the exact moment when a reasonable adult realizes she has no idea where she is. The woman inside my navigation system told me to turn left, and I drove straight through the intersection.

I had been doing fine until then. The radio was playing, I was singing along with total confidence, and Brenda was sitting in the passenger seat holding the printed invitation. We were headed to a retirement luncheon at a restaurant I had never visited, but the card said it was only half an hour away.

I had GPS, a full tank of gas, an address, and Brenda. Three of those things would eventually prove useful.

The navigation system had given me plenty of warning. It told me the turn was coming, displayed the intersection on the screen, and counted down the feet. At the actual line, it told me to turn.

I continued straight.

There are mistakes you recognize the instant you make them, and this was one. The navigation voice went quiet for a moment. Then came the word: “Recalculating.”

I turned down the radio. Not a little, but almost completely. Then I leaned forward toward the windshield.

"Was that our turn?" Brenda asked.

"No."

It was. I knew it was, Brenda knew it was, and the navigation system knew it was. Somewhere in orbit, I felt satellites exchanging notes. But I had already entered the first official stage of being lost, which is not confusion, but pure denial.

I Need Quiet So I Can See

The first thing I noticed about myself was that reaching for the volume knob felt completely logical. The music had suddenly become an obstacle to navigation.

Why, exactly? The street signs were not coming through the speakers, and the restaurant had not hidden itself inside the baseline of a song. My eyes were responsible for reading the road, yet my hand went straight to the volume dial.

Then I leaned farther toward the glass. When we cannot find an address, we move our faces six inches closer to the windshield, as though the missing information is hovering somewhere over the hood.

I was driving at reduced speed, leaning forward, and staring intensely at every passing sign while the radio whispered in the background like a child warned not to interrupt adults.

Brenda started to say something.

"Hold on," I said. "I’m trying to see."

She stopped, and I heard what I had just said out loud. I had asked another human being to stop producing sound so my eyes could perform better.

Driving requires focus, and unfamiliar roads demand more of it. Scientists who study attention have proven for decades that we have a limited capacity for competing inputs. A conversation, music, directions, traffic, and searching for a hidden street sign all fight for the exact same brain real estate.

So lowering the volume wasn't crazy. The ridiculous part was everything I did next.

The Machine and I Develop Differences

The navigation system had recovered from my betrayal. "Turn right in 500 feet."

I looked at the approaching street. "That can’t be right."

Brenda turned toward me. "What?"

"That road."

"What about it?"

"I don't think that's right."

This was an extraordinary stance for me to take. I had entered the destination into a computer because I had no idea where I was going. The computer, using satellite tracking unavailable to me, told me where to turn. I rejected its advice based on my superior knowledge of a county I had never set foot in.

"I think we should stay on this road," I announced.

"Why?"

"It just feels like we should."

There it was. Technology had maps, but I had feelings. I liked my odds, so I kept driving straight.

"Recalculating."

There is no open accusation in that word. The machine does not say, "Jane, we discussed this." It does not sigh, nor does it ask whether you have always had trouble following basic instructions. It simply says, "Recalculating." But once you ignore directions twice, the tone changes. I could hear the disappointment.

"Fine," I said to the dashboard.

"Are you arguing with the GPS?" Brenda asked.

"No."

I was. The GPS told me to make a U-turn. Absolutely not.

I don't know why drivers react to U-turns as though they are public confessions of moral failure. There was a safe place to turn around, the machine wanted me to turn around, Brenda wanted me to turn around, and I knew I had missed the road. Still, something inside me resisted. A U-turn meant admitting that moving forward was no longer progress, so naturally, I kept going forward.

We Are Not Lost

"Are we lost?" Brenda asked.

This is the least useful question a passenger can ask. If the driver knows where she is, the question is unnecessary. If the driver does not know where she is, the question is inflammatory.

"We are not lost," I said.

"Okay."

"We just missed a turn."

"Okay."

"The GPS is rerouting us."

"Okay."

I did not like the way she said "okay." It had far too much understanding in it.

Being lost is strange because adults will confess to major personal flaws before admitting they do not know where they are. We will blame traffic layout, poor signage, GPS glitches, odd street numbering, or municipal city planners. Anything except the truth: "I don't know where I am."

I was not lost. I was temporarily located somewhere other than where I intended to be. I could not explain the distinction, but I felt it deeply.

Passenger Navigation Services

A few minutes later, Brenda pointed through the glass. "I think that’s the road."

"Where?"

"There."

"WHERE?"

"Right there."

Pointing is not navigation. Passengers need to understand this. When someone is driving through unfamiliar territory, extending one finger toward forty percent of the windshield while saying "there" is not useful data.

"Which road?"

"The one by the gas station."

"There are two roads by the gas station."

"The second one."

I drove right past it.

"That one," Brenda said.

"Why didn’t you say something?"

"I did."

"No, you said 'there.'"

"Well, that was there."

It was hard to argue with the geography.

The GPS spoke up again: "Recalculating."

"Everybody needs to stop talking," I announced.

There were two people in the car. One of them was me, and the other had barely been allowed to speak. Still, I instituted a total communications blackout. The radio was completely off, Brenda was silent, and the navigation system was on probation.

We drove another mile, and then Brenda broke the silence. "I don't want to say anything."

That is a sentence nobody wants to hear from a passenger after twenty minutes of navigation debates.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Brenda."

"Well, I think we passed that Walgreens before."

I looked to my right: same red sign, same corner, same parking lot, and possibly the same man loading paper towels into a sedan.

"No, we didn’t."

"I think we did."

"That was another Walgreens."

Brenda looked at me, and I looked at Brenda. I had officially reached the stage where believing in two identical Walgreens within three blocks of each other was easier than admitting I was driving in a circle.

Three minutes later, Walgreens returned. At that point, even I had to accept that the pharmacy was not following us.

Forward Is Not Always Progress

I pulled into a parking lot. It was the first sensible move I had made all afternoon.

The moment the car stopped, the pressure evaporated. There was no traffic to monitor, no lane choices to make, and no need to pretend the next light would fix the last six.

I picked up my phone, looked at the address on the printed invitation, and then looked at the GPS screen.

I had typed Drive instead of Avenue.

That was it. For twenty minutes, I had been following flawless directions to the wrong location, getting furious that the wrong place refused to turn into the right one.

Brenda looked over at my screen. "Is that it?"

"No."

"What is it?"

"Nothing."

"Jane."

"I put in Drive instead of Avenue."

There was silence, not a polite silence, but a dangerous one. I looked at her, and her face was already twisting as she tried not to laugh.

"Go ahead," I said.

That was all she needed. Brenda laughed so hard she had to turn toward the side window. I waited, she caught her breath, looked at me, and started laughing all over again.

This is the trouble with old friends. Strangers eventually stay polite, but friends have documentation.

"So," she finally choked out, "the GPS wasn't broken?"

"No."

"And the signs weren't wrong?"

"No."

"And there weren't two Walgreens?"

I started the engine. "We are going to be late."

The Thirty-Second Solution

Once I entered the right address, the restaurant was six minutes away. Six. We had spent twenty minutes conducting an unauthorized survey of the commercial district because I typed five letters incorrectly.

I followed every instruction from the GPS: no debates, no instincts, no feelings. When she said right, I went right.

Brenda noticed. "You trust her now?"

"Brenda."

"Just asking."

We arrived at 1:18. The restaurant had a massive sign, a full parking lot, and might as well have had a brass band pointing toward the door. We walked inside, and the hostess greeted us.

"Did you have any trouble finding us?" she asked.

"No," I said immediately. "No trouble at all."

I could feel Brenda staring at the side of my head. I refused to make eye contact. There are times in friendship when loyalty means keeping quiet about Walgreens. Brenda chose mercy for the moment.

The Familiar Turn

On the way home, Brenda behaved herself for eleven minutes before speaking up. "You know what my favorite part was?"

"I don't want to know."

"When you said, 'That can't be right.'"

I kept my eyes on the road.

"The GPS knew exactly where we were," she added.

"Yes, Brenda."

"And you didn't."

"I understand the situation."

"Because you had a feeling."

I turned up the radio. Brenda immediately reached over and turned it down.

I looked at her.

"I’m trying to see," she said.

I hate when people use my own words against me. She started laughing again, and I turned the volume back up.

Later that evening, I drove out alone to grab a few groceries. No navigation, no Brenda, and no unfamiliar roads. I was driving streets I have traveled thousands of times, listening to the radio and thinking about something else, when I sailed right past the turn into my neighborhood.

I noticed almost instantly. I stared ahead, and my hand automatically reached for the volume knob on the dashboard.

I stopped halfway. I knew better now. I had spent the afternoon learning that lowering the volume does not move a street, fix a sign, or undo a missed turn. I knew exactly where I was, and all I had to do was take the next right to circle back. There was zero logical reason to touch the radio.

I considered this for two seconds, turned the volume down anyway, and leaned forward. I needed to see.

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