By Kurt Gensheimer

I stepped up to the rental desk at Norfolk International and asked for a Jeep. Any Jeep, so long as it had four wheel drive. The cheerful rental company representative, who looked like Edie McClurg in Planes, Trains and Automobiles presented me with a choice of three Jeeps: a Compass, a Grand Cherokee or a Wrangler. Now since the business, tax-writeoff justification end of my vacation was to pit a Jeep against my brother’s new Subaru Outback and run them ragged along the endless driveable beaches of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, I needed the most capable Jeep available to really put the Outback through its paces. I slapped my finger down on the miniature picture of the Wrangler.

The representative smiled, handed me the keys and the paperwork. I signed a few documents and was just about on my way when she pulled out a huge red stamp and slammed it down on the rental agreement.

“Oh, you’ll need to sign this too, honey.” I looked at the stamp and all I could think about at that moment was Edie’s famous two word response to Steve Martin’s F-bomb tirade, “You’re f**ked.”

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