Among the many flaws that I’ve hesitated to confess here is my appallingly poor ability to navigate, whether on a highway or in the halls of a large high school on parents’ night. This is embarrassing but not my fault, or so I was recently told by a psychologist who studies left- and right-handedness. Apparently, the fact that I’m practically ambidextrous—playing sports and holding a pen with my left hand but opening jars and using scissors with my right—gives me such left-right confusion that I can’t navigate easily. It has also sparked so many tearful encounters with suburban gas station attendants, whom I had to beg for di-rections to swim meets and ballet lessons, that I became fearful about driving to new places.

Enter GPS! Thanks to the computer lady with perfect diction, I am suddenly whisking my son away to Williamsburg, Virginia, for a mother-son retreat and popping over to my sister’s house in New Jersey without benefit of a human navigator (i.e., husband Jeff). When I get lost picking up the kids from a movie in the next town, I simply plug in our home address and ignore the sniggering teens in the backseat. And the latest: Google Maps provides a radiating blue dot that I can follow to any U.S. destination.

Technology hasn’t just healed me; it’s made me ballsy—so much so that when I find myself at the Texas Conference for Women in Houston, I decide it’s time to head to Gonzales, a town two and a half hours away by car. The reason: Several years ago, I got hooked on genealogy and traced my mother’s family to Texas in the 1850s. To go deeper, I needed to spend a day in the Gonzales archives, and this was my chance.

I pick up a car (my first solo rental!), and with my iPad set to Google Maps and my GPS from home plugged into the dash (yes, I brought it in carry-on), I launch—only to get socked by rush hour. Night falls, and the GPS keeps dying (turns out it wasn’t fully charged). Imagining the TV headline magazine editor lost in texas—never heard from again, I panic and phone Jeff to make sure he is the last person I talk to. But Google’s blue dot insists I’m fine. So I turn up the radio and learn to trust. Three hours later, I pull into Belle Oaks Inn, the gorgeous antebellum B&B I’ve booked, giddy with triumph. “How was your trip?” the innkeeper asks. “Hit a bit of traffic,” I say, as nonchalantly as if I’d been navigating on my own for years. “Sometimes things just take a little longer than you think.”

Lesley@more.com
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Click here to read Lesley's December/January 2012 Editor's Letter.

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