Two college students playing in an out-of-town hockey tournament went out to eat with their parents after a late game, but the restaurant they picked had just closed its kitchen.
"There's another place just a few blocks away," the hostess said helpfully. "Take a left out of the parking lot, go two blocks, turn right and go one block."
The parents and the players retreated to their separate cars. When the players sat in the parking lot for a couple of minutes without moving, one of the parents walked over to see if there was a problem with the car.
"Not at all," they said. "We're just programming the directions into the GPS.' "
Is that where we've ended up, with a younger generation that can't go three blocks without being told by a electronic voice where to turn?
There was a time not long ago -- at least, in parents' perspective -- when going on a family vacation meant bringing along a road map on which the passengers could plot the journey's progress.
But the public's embrace of the Global Positioning System, a satellite-driven navigation process originally created for the military, is in danger of turning map-reading into a lost art.
The Boy Scouts of America is determined not to let that happen. All second-class scouts -- that's an indication of their rank, not their status -- are required to learn how to use a compass and a map, said Kent York, the communications director for the Northern Star Council serving the Twin Cities.