AUNTY EM, AUNTY EM . . . AUNTY EM . . . AUNTY EM

Today was going along just fine until I got in my car and looked at my dashboard and noticed someone had stolen my sense of direction. That's right, most of you may have been born with a sense of direction and a lot of those other OVER-RATED QUALITIES but unlike the rest of the world, me, the tin man, the cowardly lion and a few other not so well known characters have had to aquire certain of our qualities from other sources, i.e. Ebay; the Sears and Roebuck Catalog; Radio Shack and The Great and Powerful OZ.

Seriously though, I was not amused at all to realize someone had stolen my GPS unit. My husband gave it to me as a gift about three years ago when he realized how seriously F- my sense of direction was. I had taken a part-time job about a half an hour from home in a bigger city and from time to time had to run errands in the city. I would call him for help finding my way around but I think the real clincher was the four or five times I got lost on my way home. Somehow I would get turned onto the wrong freeway and get totally lost. I would call him crying with no idea where I was. I would have to give him mile markers and land marks to identify where I was so he could get me turned around and back home. It's a really frightening thing to find your weak spot--especially when you are lost and you don't have a sense of direction and no way to figure out which way to go. Thank goodness for cell phones because I was on a desert freeway with no places of business or phone booths and no friendly faces. That's when hubby bought me a GPS. That's when I got my external sense of direction!

We actually named our GPS unit. We called her Emmy, after Aunty Em in the Wizard of Oz. So, it's kind of sad that Aunty Em is really gone this time and no amount of calling out her name is going to bring her back! Stealing is a bad thing. It's not that we can't replace the GPS. It will be costly and it's not a convenient time to do it. More than that--what they took from me was my personal safety. My ability to move around with ease. They took my external sense of direction. They took what has made me feel more normal and more like everyone else than anything else I've ever owned and that is a real drag. Danged thieves.