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After a five hour bumpy flight I landed at Dulles International Airport just west of Washington DC.  The wheels of my United flight hit ground about 11:45pm and by the time I rode the 1960’s vintage shuttle bus  to the terminal, got my bags, and arrived at my Hertz rental car it was well after midnight.  To put it mildly I was tired, grumpy, and feeling more or less asocial.  So, I loaded my bags into what appeared to be a perfectly nice Nissan Altima, wedged myself into the driver’s compartment, inserted the key, pushed the start button, and waited for something to happen.  The car’s dashboard lights flicked off and on a couple of times apparently attempting to communicate something to me in Morse Code.  So I tried again.  I ejected the key, reinserted it, and pressed the start button again – only a bit more decisively this time. Once again, as if on cue, the car’s dash lights flickered at me for a moment and came to rest in the lit position.  ”OK, what in the heck am I doing wrong here,” I thought to myself.  ”I am tired, and must just be missing some basic step.” So I checked the door to make sure it was shut, made sure the parking brake was disengaged, and double checked that the car was in park.  I went through my mental checklist with the precision of an airline pilot and everything looked right.  So I drew in a deep breath and pressed the start button a third time.  The car answered me with the same, now profane, dashboard blinks and then went silent.  ”That’s it!” I yelled at the steering wheel. “I am a Hertz Five Star Gold member for crying out loud! You think they could give me a car that would start!”  I threw open the driver’s door just hard enough that it bounced back and smacked me in the head as I was leaning to get out. This succeeded in sending my frustration into apoplectic frenzy.  I popped the trunk, grabbed my bags, and drug all of my worldly possessions to the Hertz customer service counter.  I must have looked the way I felt because, when I stormed into the office,  the young counter clerk stared at me as if he had just seen Arnold Schwarzenegger with his titanium skull exposed holding a 40 watt plasma rifle.

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