I went for a drive late one night. The events of that day will always bother me.

"Oh, man, before I forget. Do you think you could help me with something?"

The checker was a kid with pimples who looked to be in his late teens or early twenties. He looked up from putting the Marlboro, two drinks, and a bag of potato chips into a plastic bag. He stood there for a moment, as if he were frozen in the middle of something. Then he finally replied. "Hey, man, what's up?"A sigh that was hard to hear came from me. To put it nicely, I was afraid that I would be told to go for a long walk off a short pier. I felt better and reached into my back pocket to find what was there. "See, I guess I've... gotten lost out here. I went for a drive late at night and got lost on all these two-lane back roads. I spread out the map and put it on the counter so that both of us could see it before we went on. "So I was hoping you could give me a rough idea of where we are on this map?" How do I get back to the main road? What's more important?"

After a long period of quiet, the kid started to laugh, first softly and then more loudly. "Dude, a map on paper?"“Are you for real? ” he finally said between wheezes. Do you think this is 1993?"As for me, I just let out a sigh of resignation." I had a bad feeling that someone his age would respond this way, and it looked like I was right. I could have seen it coming. He looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, "Bro, really, don't you have GPS in your car or something?""Why?" he asked. Right away, I put my thumb…