[...] I once had a girlfriend who dumped me for a more conventionally successful and conventionally handsome and conventionally decent fellow, and afterward, I would see her car everywhere. But, of course, it was a fairly common make and color, and all cars look the same today anyway (see: my critically acclaimed essay on this very subject, “A Single Carnation,” in The Journal of What’s Wrong With Today’s Cars), so it was most likely rarely if ever her. [...]