GPS navigational systems are See 'N Says for adults.
An arrow points to a picture, a voice gives direction - and the guy activating the button laughs and ignores it because he knows a better way.
I met a guy from Champion who once spent five days looking for a fancy restaurant he heard about in Howland. He finally settled for a Burger King in Butte, Mont., which is where he gave up on the ''shortcut'' he knew.
His date stumbled out of his car, said yes, this definitely was the place she meant to go to with him, then accidentally leaped into a passing cab. He hasn't seen her since. He figures she got lost without his skills, most likely.
She was one more woman who foolishly thought the problem of the guys in their lives refusing to ask for directions was over.
Obviously, publicly asking for directions is an affront to our maleness - or "idiotic ego," as I hear female friends mislabel it. We know that we can find the place by ourselves even if we've never been there before, don't know the address and have forgotten the name of where we're going.
But we love technology. We were enthralled with the first pull of the See 'N Say in our cribs and have been filling our spaces with gadgets and gears ever since. If it's electronic, we want it. A GPS is a See 'N Say for our cribs on wheels.
Our ladies thought, "We have guys, technology and directions all crammed together in one private space. No one will know he's asking for directions. So now he will ask the GPS and finally, we will get where we meant to go!''
Ha!
We didn't believe our See 'N Says when they said "The cow goes mooooo." After a little dismantling and reconfiguring, the cows on our See 'N Says said "oink, oink" and sometimes "quack, quack, quack."
So why would we listen to a GPS?
A recent survey published by Reuters shows that 83 percent of all guys regularly ignore the directions offered by their GPS systems anyway.
This is because of that other great male trait - knowing shortcuts that you don't.
Every guy knows a shortcut that would have gotten you there five minutes faster even if he's never been there before, doesn't know the address or has forgotten the name of the place where you said you went.
I set out for my mailbox one day when my brother-in-law insisted he knew a shortcut that would get me there five minutes quicker. I was walking a straight line from the front porch to the postal post and the trip takes 17 seconds, but he said it anyway. He couldn't help himself. It's just what we do.
(His shortcut took 6 minutes and 23 seconds. But I figured a way to get it down to 4 minutes and 12 seconds.)
Besides, we guys know that the GPS often is wrong. A mapping program once tried to send me down a road that had been replaced by the Ravenna Arsenal way back during World War II.
But it was OK. I knew a shortcut. And only 36 hours later, I got my wife to the party that was 23 miles from our house. See, Honey, I told you I didn't need to ask for directions.
Say, could you yank the lever on that See 'N Say for me? The cow whinnies now, but I know a quick way to fix it.
----- To make the next turn correctly, direct yourself to the Burton W. Cole fan page on Facebook or say burtseyeview@tribtoday.com.