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If you are old enough, you remember when the new fangled watches came out that if you held your pointer on one button while pressing on another with your pinky and pushed the third with your chin you could slip your toe up there and spin a little dial and the amazing contraption would actually tell you what time it was. Those were the days.

I miss the times when new advances in electronics were so astounding. I have this new GPS device that will tell you exactly where you are anywhere on the planet. Some people don't seem to be as enthused as me and actually get a little exasperated at my ability to utilize new devices. I was driving home the other day and my wife called on my cell. I Bluetoothed her into the midrange speakers of my 27 audio source media outlet (fully web accessible) and when she asked where I was I replied, "27 minutes, 33 seconds North by 33 minutes 17 seconds West. She asked when I might get home and I said I couldn't let her know just then as I was in traffic and needed to keep my toe on the pedal, so couldn't access my watch.

Things got a little hectic then. I intended to look at my navigation screen to see if I needed to turn but instead brought up my rear view camera display. This guy behind me had these really cool 51 inch rims with tires that had a sidewall of less than a quarter inch. Man, I wanted some of those. While distracted by those shiney beauties I heard the beep beeping of the crosswalk alerting blind people that the light was going to change and mistook it for a back up alarm on a Lincoln Navigator (the car, not the device) and swerved to miss it. Long story short, I drove off a cliff and crashed into a 400 foot cell tower. Now here is where I got lucky.

 When I fell off the cliff my six point safety harness held the top half of my body securely but my legs were free to flail about at the whim of physics. My right foot wound up near the steering wheel and when the front airbags deployed they shoved my foot up and to my left. The side airbags pushed my arm into my face and my toes somehow wrapped around my wrist and jammed against my watch (I have no idea what happened to my sport 2 exercise shoes, the laces on those things are primitive). I took a deep breath to compose my excitement before commanding Onstar to call my wife and tell her that I just happened to know it was 6:30, I was at the cell tower 2 blocks from our house and should be home around 10. The blue sky looked awesome as I stared at it in my rear view screen and I couldn't wait till the jaws of life would finally allow me to get out, get online, and see about some new rims.

If it had been 1963 I would have already been home (less traffic then), my phone would have rung (ours was one long and two shorts), and all I would have had to talk about was whether or not Jim and Margaret were going to allow Betty (Princess) to go to the sock hop. James (Bud) would have hit Kathy (Kitten) with a basketball and the Andersons would be living a much more exciting life than me. As it is, if I can just move my toe a little to my left, I can activate my stopwatch program and see if it takes longer than usual for the rescue squad to get me out this time.

Driving tip:  Most accidents happen within 10 miles of home. Don't let your guard down because you are in familiar territory. I believe that statistic to be true but the fact is, most driving is within 10 miles of home. You should really not let your guard down...ever. Your children and paint will thank you.