One of the greatest inventions in people moving – kind of like herding cattle into a gate, leading to a truck, heading to a meat-packing company – is the escalator.

I’m not going to include the obvious, greatest contraption, the automobile, because I’m still kind of peeved about the collision I was involved in a few weeks back. And my threshold of being peeved by automobiles increased this week when our car, a trustworthy 2003 Chevrolet Impala, started making knocking noises on the way to an important interview. It cost something like $400 to fix.

Which is one of the reasons we have been a one-car family for the past five years. They break down.