I was driving my mom downtown the other day. She needs a chauffeur since her fall at Thanksgiving necessitated the donning of a huge neck brace that makes her move like a robot.

She was trapped with me in the car, so of course I introduced a topic I knew would get her goat start an interesting conversation.

“I showed Colin what someone had written in a Christmas card the other day and he couldn’t read it,” I said.

“What?” She tried to turn her whole upper body to face me. I don’t think it’s necessary to maintain polite eye contact with a driver, but I appreciated the effort.

…domo arigato, Mr. Roboto…