My Shaggy Dog Story

 

For all this long-time feud I’ve had with electronic culture taking over humanistic culture, I’ve been quite grateful for Siri and Google maps on this trip. There is some pleasure in figuring out routes on paper maps and following directions a friend has given you, but also quite relaxing to just let Google maps take you away. I’m quite content to trust it and be wholly obedient, doing whatever it tells me. 

 

I arrived late afternoon at the Carriage House near the Pingry School, my alma mater where I was to talk the next day. Once settled in, I set off in search of some dinner and decided to just go down one road and see what I could find. Some three miles away, I found a lovely little pizza place and that was enough. After dinner, I hoped to find a banana and a little milk for the granola I had with me for tomorrow’s breakfast. Set off down another road and found a Quick Mart which had the milk, but not a piece of fruit to be seen. The clerk pointed me down a road toward a place that might have it and off I went for about three miles before I figured it might have been the wrong road.

 

So back to the Quick Mart and down another road and things weren’t looking promising until a big shopping center loomed up. I took a left turn that I thought would bring me to the parking lot, but instead dumped me on a highway without a nearby exit in sight. All of this is the darkness of night without a moon and not the best driving conditions for an old guy.

 

So I leaned on Siri to direct me back to Pingry and she announced, “Proceed for 5 miles and then take this exit.” Aargh! Nothing to do but follow. But when I finally arrived there and got off that exit, she said, “Proceed on this road for 39 miles." WTF??!!!!!

 

Luckily, I remember that there is another Pingry Campus in Short Hills and that was probably where she was taking me. “Siri, Siri, Pingry School, MARTINSVILLE!!!!” I shouted and said, “That will add another 45 minutes.” 

What?!!! Then figured out that she had combined the two trips and took that as a stop on the way. The good news was that as she directed me down some back roads, I stumbled on a wonderful market and was able to get the banana after all. I believe I can say that I have never worked so hard to buy a banana.

 

So that’s my shaggy dog story.

 

PS After writing that last sentence, I wondered, “What exactly does a shaggy dog story mean?” and got this answer from Wiki:

 

In its original sense, a shaggy-dog story or yarn is an extremely long-winded anecdote characterized by extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents  and terminated by an anticlimax.  In other words, it is a long story that is intended to be amusing and that has an intentionally silly or meaningless ending. 

 

Yep. This qualifies!