Desideratum

Think your life is tough? Put yourself in the shoes of the NYT reader who identifies with this introductory sentence from Sunday's travel section:

"If you go to great lengths to choose the perfect vacation spot and a hotel that offers everything from a pillow menu to a flawless view, it can be somewhat dispiriting to arrive at the car rental lot and slide behind the wheel of a generic four-door sedan."

Now that's a heartbreaker: the indignity and shame of driving a generic four-door sedan! And while on vacation, no less!

Keep this hardship in mind, dear readers, the next time your child is hospitalized or your landlord evicts you. At least you're not driving a Corolla!

(My apologies to those of you who do, like me, drive a Corolla. Last year, my wife had the audacity to donate her old Mazda Protege to the American Lung Association. Our apologies now go to the recipient; we didn't mean to dispirit you.)