You sportin'?

I am troubled that the Volkswagon Beetle--my current ride--has been included in the list of Top Ten Gay Cars of the year by no less an authority than The New York Times. I drive a yellow one--owned by my father, actually--with yellow and white plastic daisies in the dashboard-mounted vase. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I should also state, for the record, that I am not gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that either.



Now this is Amelia Earhart's plane. A Lockheed Vega 5B, if you're counting. Ms. Earhart was, I am sure, gay. And you can see, if you have the gift, a clear and vital link between the two machines. So I can see what they are talking about.

My grandfather covered her historic arrival in the UK for The Times. I have read the article before (I found it while googling my cousin by the same name) and though I can't seem to dredge it up from the Times archives, I remember with some fondness his use of the word 'ejaculate' as a verb meaning, roughly, to blurt out a statement.

He is mentioned in an article about the same event written by Captain Hilton H. Railey of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Not only am I not gay, but lately I've been employing a new strategy to meet women in Leesburg. Now that the weather is a bit warmer, whenever I pull up next to an attractive woman at a traffic light, I toot the horn of my yellow Beetle and ejaculate the words "You sportin'?" out my open window.

I have entitled the initiative "The Audacity of Hope." Which, I think, is catchy. Thus far, it is a failed strategy. I nonetheless persist.

As I understand it, Ms. Earhart got into her plane one day, on the way to someplace else, and never came back.