HE WANTS TO BUY A SELF-DRIVING CAR!!!!!

Q: What’s the difference between a normal car and a self-driving car?

A: In a normal car, you yell at the idiot in front of you. In a self-driving car, you are the idiot in the back seat screaming at the computer.

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Mr. Wonderful is anything but boring. He’s lightyears removed from ever being labelled a luddite. He listens to Audible novels and serious history tomes, watches YouTube videos about bit coin and then buys some, studies old photos of his golf swing to see if his nearly-90-year-old body can still replicate that special turn, then spends hours trying. 

He’s always looking for new things to help his aging body too. As his macular degeneration advanced and his vision worsened, he discovered the Orcam, a clever tool which instantly reads printed and digital text aloud from any surface with the point of a finger. It’s brilliant! He can now read menus, emails, even my blog (or so he assures me).

Admittedly, Mr. W. occasionally gets agog and suckered into some hare-brained scheme after watching ads on television. The most recent involved a dietary supplement (“just two drops in a glass of warm water every other night”) that GUARANTEES to restore vision in two weeks. He bought 10 bottles of the snake oil. It’s been four weeks now and, well, honestly, the Orcam remains on the front line.

But he can’t drive any more, which is tough. So his latest EUREKA has me slightly unnerved. Actually, call it a simmering panic about to boil over. Because he announced he’s determined to buy an electric self-driving car — a Tesla. You know, the kind of car where you sit in the back seat while the steering wheel — with nobody holding it! — “easily” negotiates through Dock Square jaywalkers or down Route 1 to Ogunquit in the middle of summer, avoiding bikers, hikers and the occasional deer. 

“Val,” Mr. W. says, “a self-driving car stops at red lights, it goes around traffic circles, it changes lanes, it speeds up and then decelerates, it’s 100% safe and perfect for my needs. It anticipates everything.”

But no one’s in control!

“Think about how much easier our lives will be with a self-driving car,” he continued. “I can go to the supermarket and pick up cat food or whatever you need. I can drive to the golf course, play a few holes or practice. I can go to my doctor visits and do errands for you before coming home. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”

Uh, yes. But truly, no.

“It’ll be so easy to take long drives to visit Chris, Jen and the grand boys in New Jersey,” he adds. “And to visit your sister in New York. Hey, maybe we should think about taking it all the way to Florida next winter. You can probably knit three sweaters along the way and I can finally finish listening to PILLARS OF THE EARTH on Audible. We’ll be so relaxed.”

It would take a triple dose of Valium to settle my nerves in a driverless car.

Elon Musk, the key honcho of these cars, might believe, “Ten years from now, 90% of all distance driving will be accomplished with AI in a driverless car.” I’m not buying it.

Wanna take odds on who’s going to win this argument