Katha Pollitt and Andrew Sullivan
Entry 9:
Andrew,
You sent me scurrying to the New York Times business pages and there I found a potential solution for one of my life's peskiest problems. A French company is now producing a tiny little car that seats just two, weighs only 770 pounds, goes 27 miles per hour, costs about 10 percent more than the next-smallest regular kind of car (after all, this is France, where la vie coute cher)--and, thanks to a legal loophole, it doesn't require a drivers' license! To people like me, a multiple flunker of the roadtest, a micro-car is just the thing. I know how to drive, I do, I do, I do. I just get all flustered when I have to prove it under the stern, judgmental eyes of the state. 27 miles per hour is just about right for me.
Of course, tootling about in my light little micro-car, rather like Stuart Little in his roadster, I would be no match for the sports utility vehicles that roam I-95 like woolly mammoths looking for prey. I hate those cars--why should anything be bigger than it has to be? Perennial cry of one who was always the shortest girl in the class, I know. So I would only use it on back roads, to go to tag sales and garden centers on weekends in Connecticut. Those are just about the only places I want to go, anyway.
And they ask me why I'm so keen on France!
Katha Pollitt is a columnist at The Nation. Andrew Sullivan is a senior editor at the New Republic.