After visiting Gillette Castle in East Haddam, CT, the family piled into the car to head over to the neighboring town of Chester, CT for dinner at Otto’s Pizza.
It’s such a glorious thing in today’s world:
Receive a recommendation from a friend for a restaurant one town away and simply enter the name of that establishment into your phone for accurate, turn-by-turn directions.
There was a time – not so long ago – when directions were remembered or hand-written, and life was slightly more complex. Someone like me – with an excellent sense of direction, a constant awareness my cardinal direction, and the ability to find my way through a city using the sun and other landmarks – were prized for our ability to navigate this world without the information that so many required.
Given Elysha’s absence of a sense of direction – she got lost exiting two restaurants this weekend – I think she may have married me solely for my ability to navigate.
But now, with the advent of technology, my skills have been replaced by the phone. Oddly enough, my children will never know what it’s like to be lost, to pull over and ask for directions, or to struggle to find a road that they recognize or a highway that seems familiar. Nor will they feel the self-satisfaction in knowing that you were once lost but now – thanks solely to your wit and wisdom – are now found.
Simply turn on the phone and listen to some human-sounding voice guide you to your destination.
Unless, of course, you are trying to find Otto’s Pizza in Chester, CT. When I entered the name of this particular restaurant into Waze, my options included pizza places in Maine, California, El Salvador, Columbia, and the UK.
Not exactly sure how Waze was even going to provide directions to the UK. Even El Salvador and Columbia seemed unlikely.
Happily, it turned out that Otto’s Pizza in Chester, CT was less than two miles away, and a quick Internet search yielded an address less than 5 minutes away. And our friends were right. The pizza was quite good.
And considering how hungry everyone was, we thankfully did not need to cross continents in order to eat it.
