The GPS birthday

As my birthday is at the very end of April, Joe has all month to discover, by various means, what I would like to do to celebrate. This year he suggested that he could make all the arrangements and surprise me.

I thought for a minute. "Okay," I said.

"Really?" he said, sort of weakly. Clearly he had expected me to decline. But he rallied, and expressed how proud he was that I was willing to be spontaneous.

"Don't be too proud," I said. "It's just that I'm not very good at making decisions. This way you can make all the decisions."

As the days wound down to my birthday, he would occasionally bolster his confidence in his ability to keep his plans a secret. "I think I'm gonna be able to keep this to myself," he would say.

When the night of my birthday came, he assured me he did in fact have a plan, and that it was a multi-phase plan.

"Oh," he added off-handedly as we were leaving, "bring the GPS."

The fact that we would need the GPS did not necessarily rule out any nearby restaurant, except for Outback, which Joe knows how to get to. In our house, "bring the GPS" does not always mean we are traveling to some exotic location. It could mean we are traveling to Lowe's, a scant few miles away, but a place we do not go very often, and therefore a place whose location remains nebulous in our heads.

On the highway he suddenly said, "Well, time for the GPS. I thought we'd go to Starbucks first. We need to find a Starbucks."

"Take this exit and make two rights," I said, without consulting the GPS.

He looked at me appreciatively. "Wow, you're good."

After enjoying our coffee Joe asked if I wanted to know where we were going next. I pointed out that Cold Stone Creamery was right next door, and if we were to eat dinner there it would be perfectly fine with me.

"It would be spontaneous," I said encouragingly. "And we wouldn't even need the GPS."

"That's not dinner," he said.

"Ice cream could be dinner," I said. "In fact, if you look on the GPS, it will list Cold Stone under 'Restaurants,' and restaurants serve dinner, so therefore we could have dinner at Cold Stone."

We did not, however, eat dinner at Cold Stone. So much for being spontaneous.

He seemed strongly interested in telling me our next destination, even though I said I was happy to be surprised about it, and finally he said, "Well, I'd have to use the GPS to find out how to get there, but you'll know. We're going to Eggspectations."

"Down the street and turn left," I intoned, like Debbie, or Dorothy, or whatever our GPS persona is.

But even Eggspectations was not our final destination. We left the restaurant after our meal, and before I knew it, I was being whisked away to the exotic location of...Lowe's.

"How did we end up at Lowe's on my birthday?" I said.

He looked innocent. "Must have been the GPS."