GPS

In industry parlance, I'm what's called a "late adopter." I don't buy into a product or technology until it's so ubiquitous that it's embedded into wristwatches. I figure that after 20 years, this GPS thing isn't just a fad, and I can safely spend some of my own money on it.

I'm looking at the Magellan Maestro 4700. It has all the features I want (e.g., Bluetooth, voice prompts, large touchscreen), but is only lacking in one area: defense against my wife's harangues.

One of the several ways in which Betsy is superior to most women and defies stereotypes is that she has an excellent sense of direction. Not only does she know the way to many different places, but she can relate them all to each other and determine new shortcuts and routes on the fly. In that category, I remain undistinguished. Betsy says that I'm bad at directions, whereas I would state that I am merely average (which from her lofty vantage point of superiority looks worse than it is). She has mocked me terribly for wanting a GPS. Sure, she can take a rambling story of incoherence and a Cro-Magnon drawing on a damp cocktail napkin and figure out how to get where she's going, but that doesn't mean that GPS is a frivolity for all of us. We make a good team, however, when we're all together and she navigates while I drive. She's the better navigator, but I'm still the better driver, because, hey, she is a woman.

As I face my first official duty day as a brigade XO for units scattered in armories all over the Commonwealth, I thought it wise to take a precaution and buy a GPS device. Am I wrong?