Here's the scenario: You're driving on a country road with your spouse, you've lost your way, there's no place to ask for directions except some weather-beaten service station where the only person working is missing some teeth. You're reluctant to stop because either:

A) You've seen too many movies where the attendant sends the city slickers the wrong way on purpose, in order to serve up the umpteenth robbery-torture victim to his cackling, unhygienic friends and relatives.

B) You're a man.

Either way, help is ahead: Google announced a partnership last week with Gilbarco Veeder-Root, which makes gasoline pumps, to begin providing pumps that can dispense driving directions.

The equipment will include a small screen and Internet connection to Google's mapping service. Initially, directions will be provided only to area landmarks that are pre-programmed, but motorists eventually should be able to type in a specific address to learn how to get there.

"We think the service will create more customer loyalty for retailers," Lucy Sackett of Gilbarco Veeder-Root told The Associated Press. It should also drive many "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"-style gangs out of business, but more important, resolve some 87 percent of husband-wife arguments that take place within the car.

Ha! Women are hardly better

Actually, this whole thing about men and women being polar opposites in the directions-requesting department may be every bit as much of a myth as the one that males gag reflexively at the mention of Jane Austen, James Blunt or "Grey's Anatomy." Actually, the latter are absolute truths, but a AAA survey two years ago raised doubts about any gender gap over admitting when one's lost.

The motor club's study found men who were lost stopped to ask for directions 34 percent of the time and women 37 percent, a difference hardly worth making colossal societal generalizations about -- if true. Two-thirds of misguided Americans, meanwhile, are presumably happier to drive around foggy-brained, murmuring to their partner, "Uh, is that the same Mail Pouch barn we passed 10 minutes ago?"

Jan Coyne, director of AAA Geographic Information Systems, speculated that the gender mythology may have developed from the fact that men are drivers an estimated 78 percent of the time when couples travel. Hence, it's only natural that the clueless target of the phrase, "Honey [or 'moron' or whatever pet name you use], wouldn't it be better to ask for directions?" is more likely to be male than female.

The same AAA study did report that the vast majority of people who tried to find their way themselves were lost for less than 30 minutes before getting on track. Less than 1 percent admitted never finding their destination.

We're lost looking for gas

Meanwhile, if it feels like it's getting harder to find a gas station to even bother asking for help, you're not imagining things. The favorite refueling location of The Morning File just reinvented itself as a bank, and many of our other usual stations have been otherwise converted.

We especially like that trick where they stay in business to provide car repairs, but not petroleum, yet leave out the rusting signs advertising gas for some ridiculously nostalgic price like $1.39 a gallon. Even an old sign for $2.39 these days makes us pull over and weep with longing.

Over the past decade, the number of U.S. retail outlets of any kind to refuel your car declined 12 percent, from 190,246 to 167,476, according to the National Petroleum News. Evidently, they don't all like gouging us as much as we think.

If there's one fabric of commercialism dwindling faster than gas stations, however, it's gun dealers. At one time, American had more gun dealers than gas stations. Boy, those were the days. But the Violence Policy Center has released a study showing that only five states -- Alaska, Idaho, Montano, Oregon and Wyoming -- offer more chances to buy a gun than gasoline. Despite Pennsylvania's reputation as a pro-hunting, pro-NRA state, the last U.S. Census Bureau report on the topic listed the Keystone State with 2,525 gun dealers and 4,476 gas stations.

There must be a valuable symbolic meaning from that somehow. Perhaps fewer wives are inclined to shoot husbands who don't seek directions.