A cautinary tale

We took the kids to the Bronx Zoo today. Once again, the Zoo turned them down citing administration's fear for the welfare of the animals. Just kidding. It seemed like a good opportunity to go somewhere since SubHub is on vacation and for August, today's weather was rather mild. We made good time on the way there, about 45 minutes. However, a lot of people felt the same way about today's weather, so finding parking took about another 15 minutes. We should've tried parking on the street, and not at the Zoo. I didn't take any real food on purpose, deciding that it was much preferable for everyone to be a bit hungry than to end up with food poisoning.

So on the way back everyone was tired, myself included. I set up our GPS to "home" and closed my eyes. When I opened them, I saw something that I totally didn't expect: IKEA, Elizabeth and a worried SubHub. He asked me if I was sure that we were going in the right direction. I said I was. To be double sure, I reset GPS to "home" again and wrote off the entire experience to weirdness of the device. Sometimes it tends to give strange directions, like last week-end when we went to check out new IKEA in Brooklyn, when on the way home the device kept on sending us to New Jersey.

When we were asked to take Garden State Parkway, I lost all trust in the device. We were going further and further from home. I looked at the GPS again, and all of a sudden I had a light bulb moment. SubHub had lent our GPS to his friend a few weeks ago. What if - the thought was almost unthinkable to me - his friend changed out "home" setting. Lo and behold, I was right. We were ten minutes away from out new "home" in Mahwah, New Jersey.

SubHub was pretty ticked off. It meant that he was going to be late for the meeting with - ironically - that same friend who took liberties with out homing device. Somehow the whole thing ended up being my fault. Not his friend's, who changed out default settings. Not SubHub's, who all of a sudden took liking to precisely following directions (I guess as long as they don't come from the wife or the manual, but from electric device, why doubt them?). But mine. Because I didn't check. Whatever. Two minutes later everyone calmed down, and turned out that the friend mentioned something about changing destinations to SubHub. Once again, it never occurred to SubHub that the default settings would be changed (but it was supposed to occur to me).

So the several lessons of the story are as follows:

1. Never skimp on snacks, especially if the real food was not served on time. I thought I went a little overboard, spending $25 or so, but we pretty much went through everything.

2. Having plenty of hydration is important!

3. Put on a diaper on your toilet trained toddler. You'll thank yourself later, especially if #2 applied.

4. If you are a wife, be prepared to take the fall for everything, including bad weather and other acts of friends and G-d.

5. THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON OF ALL. If you lend someone your GPS (or any other electronic device), make sure that your default settings are still intact. Or you might end up living in Mahwah, NJ for the rest of your life.