Dear Diary …
Now I will start by saying that I LOVE the technology we have to help map out your car trips … give you directions … let you know where the Po-po are hiding … all that stuff is great. That said, I got beef with the whole “estimated arrival time” because it’s one big fat hairy lie.
Man … back in the day when these map programs were suckier … it was great. The thing would tell you it was gonna take six hours to make your trip, and then you could put the pedal to the metal and make up like 45 minutes of time and totally get there way earlier. Now? This things are too dang precise and it is flippin’ impossible to get ahead of their estimated time. It just KNOWS. Even if I drive fast … it still somehow just KNOWS that I was gonna drive fast and had already factored that into the time.
So now the only thing it does is have you make WORSE time. If you stop to pee … forget it … now you’ve lost 10 minutes that you’ll never get back. Get gas? Yup. That’s another ten. And traffic? Yup … traffic is another lost cause.
And I take issue with the traffic one because the map robot should already know about the traffic … so why isn’t it factored into the time in the first place? You get my hopes up that I’m gonna be there in 20 minutes … next thing I know you’re adding another 20 minutes because traffic and I’m stuck in some sort of never ending loop of “estimated arrival time” sadness.
Again … the robot should already know about this delay … why is he tacking it on now to make me sad? I just wanna make good time … that’s the most important part of the road trip … even more important than whatever the heck you’re doing when you get there. If I don’t make good time, then the whole thing is a failure!
Moving on Diary … How is it that children manage to destroy themselves in such a short amount of time? I know it becomes cliche to dismiss a parent when they say, “But I only turned around for two seconds,” but that truly is all the time it takes for a child to ruin everything.
I recently had to take my son to an event at my daughter’s school … So we get out of the car and get ready to walk over. I turn my head for TWO SECONDS and I look back and my son is face down on the ground and his pants are ripped.
How does this happen do quickly? Actually … how does this happen AT ALL? I could throw myself on the ground a hundred times in a row and I’m pretty sure my pants would still not be ripped. Meanwhile we’re just trying to walk from a car to a stairwell and he looks I threw him in the lion’s cage at the circus.
Is it just the makeup of their DNA that a child sees you look away and instinctively they have the urge to just fling themselves off a table, or smash something on the ground, or whatever? “Oh … he’s not looking … DESTROY!”
And it’s the same lousy story every time … “I didn’t do ANYTHING!” Yeah, you’re right. You didn’t do anything. Must’ve been that Pants Monster again, attacking innocent children to feed off of pieces of their fabric. I’m sure that’s what happened.
Is it that hard to just stand there? Clearly it is.
Till next time Diary … I say … Goodbye