Throwing a Strop is Better Than a Road Atlas

I once read that, when returning from migration, male birds find the exact spot of their birth whilst females return only to the approximate area. It made me realise just how similar we humans are to animals. When out driving with Vanessa for instance, if I navigate we find the exact spot, whereas if Vanessa navigates, the approximate area would be considered a startling result. This is why, for the past ten years, whenever Vanessa and I go anywhere – which isn’t often, I grant you – she always drives. I navigate.

This was not always so and, for the first decade of our relationship, the roles were reversed. I drove and Vanessa had a road atlas open on her knee whilst she gazed out of the window in the desperate hope that inspiration might strike. It was a good road atlas too; a very hefty hard back with street maps of every large conurbation and even pictures of the moon’s craters, although why they were there I never really worked out. Anyway, our arrival at a junction usually followed the same pattern.

“Which way?” I would ask.
“Er…”
“Left or right?”
“One of those”
“Which one?”
“Er…”

At this point I would usually grab the road atlas from Vanessa’s knee, prop in open on the steering wheel, instantly discern where we were, and head off in the right direction. Naturally, I was not altogether calm about sharing my displeasure at this run of events.

I think the worst was when Vanessa told me to turn right onto “the squiggly blue road”. That turned out to be the River Nene. Or when I pointed out that the reason we were heading the wrong way down a motorway was probably because she had the road atlas open upside down.

A few carefully selected words of disapproval – alright, a rant – would generally culminate in me throwing the road atlas from where it was propped on the steering wheel back on her knee. As it was so large and heavy, it made a satisfying thump as it landed. Only one time, it didn’t quite work out like that.

Dizzy from circumnavigating a roundabout a dozen times - as Vanessa had suggested each exit in turn until we finally hit upon the correct one - my navigator-wife decided to retrieve a mint from the glove compartment. She was leaning forward as I, busy finishing my pontificating about whether it would serve us both better if she rode in the boot, or even in a separate vehicle altogether, flung the road atlas in her direction.

The hard backed spine bounced off her head, ricocheted off the gear lever, and landed in the foot well. If she had ever had a brain cell capable of learning to navigate before that event, I had probably completely obliterated it with the blow. Despite my fuming, even to me, it was clear something radical needed to change. We couldn’t risk Vanessa sustaining brain damage every time we took a wrong turning – it was just too frequent an occurrence.

So I went out – that very afternoon – and bought a new road atlas with a soft cover. That way, if it ever bounced off her head again, it was liable to do a lot less damage. It took another six years before it dawned upon me that maybe there was another alternative…