That last turn is kind of a bitch, Fred. C'mon, George Will has not done a classic American roadtrip...with the junk food and fighting and being happy to find a good song on the radio, yeah. Lawrence O'Donnell makes awesome jello shots, too. @@

Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they--unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted--are masters of their fates.

I admit, when I choose to drive rather than take the train it is often because I want to be more in control of my travel, but that comes with a price - I can't nap or read or sit down to a meal while I'm moving. Delusions of adequacy really don't come into it.

But that's me. I'm sure George Will takes his delusions where he can get them.

My mom was a wonderful mother. When I was a child, I thought she was the Platonic ideal of motherliness.

That's great. While I have a Mountain of Crazy in my mother, she was balanced by the Grand Canyon of Awesomeness that was my dad. You gotta take the bad with the good, is how I like to think about it.

I admit, when I choose to drive rather than take the train it is often because I want to be more in control of my travel.

Or because it's snowing, and I'm southern and I AM NOT standing in that shit.

I hate the cold with the passion of a million burning suns-which would be helpful, but no.

I remember when I did my college co-op, I lived with my Uncle in Maryland and commuted over the Beltway to McLean, VA. That experience did most certainly not fill me with delusions of adequacy.

a town or city built around car culture (Hi Arlington!)

Public transportation? What's that?

iI have good parents . not crazy. two of them. They don't even give me that much grief because I don't call . (I am seriously lame that way )

BTW, have they finished the Silver Line yet? 'Cause that would have been REALLY useful to me in 1987.

Some of the crazy parents in my family are venomously destructively crazy. My parents? Hands off emotionally and recently wacky. I'm totally good with that. I have no idea how some of my cousins made it to even vaguely functional adulthood with the vipers' nests they grew up in. I mean, when your mother refuses to tell anyone who your father is because she's just that mad at the world...what chance do you have at growing up sane?

I thought I wasn't allowed to have a car due to being a Working Girl On My Own? No???

Not only are you allowed to have a car, but you have your own demographic sterotype. Sporty two-door, 4 cylinder engine, automatic transmission.