Opinion : Fantasy Explorers: Why men REALLY refuse to ask for directions

“Why are we going this way?”

“Where are we going?”

“Why can’t we just go the way we always go?”

I have heard these questions countless times from my kids in the back seat.

But any man who has ever driven with a woman knows the very same questions are so much more intense coming not from the kids in the back seat, but from the wife in the front seat.

Women for centuries have pondered quietly — and complained loudly — about this phenomenon of men just seemingly wandering around, apparently aimlessly, hoping that their intended destination — via boat, chariot, covered wagon or SUV — will appear around the next turn or over the next hill or just ahead on the horizon.

Let me explain why we do this.

Men don’t refuse to ask directions because we are stubborn. Nor because we don’t want to give women any more occasion to say, “I TOLD you so.”

While it is true that most of us are stubborn and we all hate to hear, “I TOLD you so,” those are not the reasons we avoid asking directions.

So then, why do we persist in following our own unexplainable routes?

We simply want to be historically famous.

Really.

It’s that simple. Let me explain.

Virtually every famous explorer, whether he was exploring the New World, or the Old World, whether he was Italian, Spanish or British, at one time or another, became horribly lost.

Henry Hudson is the explorer of American history who got himself the most irreversibly lost. And, it seems, getting lost made him one of the most famous of North American explorers.

More than 400 years ago, in 1611, Henry Hudson was kicked off his ship in the body of water we now call the Hudson Bay. He was placed in a small boat and drifted away, never to be seen or heard from again.

The mutiny that led to Hudson’s demise was caused by his stubborn determination to find a shortcut to Asia by going north and west from England— so far north that his boats were hindered by arctic ice.

Hudson was engaged in one of man’s favorite quests — the pursuit of a “shortcut” — when he disappeared.

Despite his demise — or perhaps because of it — Hudson became famous. The Hudson Bay— a body of water about as big as the Gulf of Mexico— along with a strait, a river and many cities, bear his name.

And although Hudson has been dead for 400 years, guys all over the world are trying to follow his path to fame. We hope that by getting lost, we will discover some new world that will have people uttering our name centuries from now.

Of course, that possibility is, statistically speaking, very unlikely – nearly impossible, actually.

And, of course it’s ridiculous.

That’s why we work so hard at it.

Look at a world map. Find England, and then the eastern coast of Asia. Draw a straight line between the two. Does that line go anywhere near Canada, especially the northern tip of the Province of Quebec, where the Hudson Strait blends with the Hudson Bay?

NO!

But that’s exactly where Hudson earned his fame.

Just about every famous explorer has gotten lost at least once in his lifetime.

When Columbus arrived in Central America, he started calling the people who lived there “Indians.” And look how famous he became.

On Nov. 7, 1805, William Clark of Lewis & Clark fame, wrote, "Ocean in View! O the joy!"

In reality, according to history, what the western American explorers saw was only the widening of the Columbia River. The Pacific Ocean was still, at that time, several days' worth of rowing away.

Leif Erickson is believed to also have gotten lost on a journey in North America, although his modern fan club in Norway denies this.

And of the man whom our country is named after, Amerigo Vespucci, wikipedia.org has this to say of his final journey: Little is known of his last voyage in 1503–1504. It is not even known whether it actually took place.

These men didn’t know where they were at, or how to get where they wanted to be from there. They put themselves and others in danger, and refused to heed the wisdom from the maritime equivalent of back seat drivers — or wives asking them to please, just this once, stop to ask for directions.

There is even a children's book about this very topic: "Explorers Who Got Lost" by Diane Sansevere-Dreher. Amazon.com describes that book with these words:

"During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries just about every explorer who sailed beyond the horizon to find new land thought he knew where he was going. But in fact, most got terribly lost and stumbled on places no one had ever heard of. Explorers Who Got Lost is the telling of these Age of Discovery heroes. Their discoveries may have been unintentional, but when they found irrevocably changed the map of the world!"

And in doing so, they earned a permanent place in history.

I do not know if Diane Sansevere-Dreher is married to one of those guys who wants to be an explorer. My guess is: Yes. That's why she wrote the book.

That’s all any of us modern guys is trying to do — find our way into history books by "irrevocably changing the map of the world."

So ladies — especially you, Diane Sansevere-Dreher — relax. Sit back — and as I often say to the people (particularly the woman) riding in my car — and enjoy the ride.

Maybe some day, we men hope, our great-great-grandchildren will read our names in their textbooks, and marvel at the wonderful discoveries we made and the way we irrevocably changed the map of the world.

"That place is named after one of my ancestors," they will proudly proclaim to their classmates.

Either that, or they will be able to point to the place where we were last seen before vanishing forever.

Editor's Note: This column is part of Dean's first E-book, "Turtle Soup for the Vegan Soul," available now at  Amazon.