I am 28 years old and while I have a driver's license, I have never owned a car. I make my way in the world with my own two feet (mostly), the metro, the bus if it shows up, Zipcars, cabs of all sorts, and when forced by circumstance, sigh, rentals. My writing the "in defense

of cars" side of this debate is a little laughable, but no one else was willing. It is true that I have convinced myself that I abhor car culture.  I find NASCAR to be a ridiculous waste. Still, while I have made a positive choice in one direction, I know the arguments for making a fundamental shift from the minority to the majority. These are the excuses for a sell-out.

Off the top, cars can be cute, attractive, and for some people even sexy. A car that reflects personal identity, like a good pair of jeans, can provide satisfaction in status like few other things. If I were to get a car, I have it all picked out. I would get a MINI, racing green with white racing stripes. I even know of a vanity license plate that no one has claimed in DC (thus I am not telling what it is). And as with the vanity plating and the stripes, one can specialize and individualize to create a personal a brand that most of America will understand quickly and easily. All shallow reasons and yet true.

Moreover, in a land where we invested in highways instead of railways, a car provides a significant convenience, even for the citified such as myself. While the walk to the farmers' markets from a centrally-located DC apartment like mine on clear sunny days is lovely, when the social calendar fills up with brunches or biking or yoga, the market falls off the weekend morning agenda easily. I am thus relegated to my grocery chain of choice as I commute past from class or elsewhere. Then, much as with the markets, I can only bring back what I carry because a cart would require me to take the cart to class or wherever else my travels take me.

To those who live and cook alone, this may not seem very concerning without my properly impacting the need to have more than I can carry. So for example, tragically, I cannot carry a case of wine. (Perhaps after my first semester as a 1L toting my books, this will change.) And yet, not infrequently, I want a case of wine, perhaps for a party. Dilemma. I can potentially take a Zipcar to assist in acquiring such bounty, but that may require significant advance planning. There are 20+ Zipcars within half a mile of my apartment, but all too often the only cars free are closer to a mile and a half away. The walk is not hard but this too chews up time that one may not have every time I want or need something.

As the years tick by, as living alone turned over to living with someone, I have less time and we together need more things. Before, when I needed to buy one eggplant for dinner I now need to buy two, and so on, to feed two people and not one. To extend the analogy, I have reached a stage of life where the mommy wars are starting to echo in the hallways, and should I choose to have children in my future, I realize the disadvantages relative to their peers that children would face with carless parents. Schools and activities can be far flung. Also, I may then need three eggplants, and then four, etc.

There is another serious truth about the need for a car that on its face is also seemingly ridiculous. Nonetheless, the parties I am now attending require greater levels of dress, and more frequently it is appropriate, or even necessary, for me to wear a dress and heels. Walking to the bus or the metro in heels, even while doable, again adds on time. Lots of time. My gait is severely shortened. While I could eschew the heels and bolster my anti-car bona fides with sensible shoes, my footwear will either be a required repeated talking point or someone will just think I have inappropriately dressed down.

So why not choose the NYC model and cab? I do. And while cabs can be enlightening and entertaining--I have had cabbies recite perfectly intoned Maya Angelou poetry from stolen books, equate my law school education to army basic training, and passionately explain the

Pakistani perspective on Kashmir--I have also had terrifying or simply unpleasant cab rides too--including shoeless drivers with holes in their socks, endlessly dirty cabs that stained my suits, and one gentleman who locked me in the cab for 15 minutes to lecture me about Delaware's great value to corporate USA. I have never been so terrified of cabs or of Delaware. The rich cultural tapestry provided by cabs is amazing, but it is not always what I need when I am in heels or in a hurry.

What's more, all of these considerations are around-town considerations, not yet even taking into account day trips, or driving to visit those who have chosen to live in the hinterlands far from the public transportation grid.  To be polite and social, it isn't exactly proper to demand that friends and family always come to me on my terms. Sometimes weddings or house parties mean we need to drive. On the weekends Zipcars clear out. Taking my boyfriend's suits and my dresses with us on bikes is a challenge we know not how to meet.

The final vestige for the carless when the random need arises, the rental, also carries flaws. Twice in ten years a car rental company to be unnamed gave away my reserved car during Thanksgiving before my reservation time. Twice in ten years close friends at the last minute provided me with their own car so that I could drive to where my presence was required, because on Thanksgiving the rental cars all disappear. Each of those times, lacking the protection of rental agency purchased insurance, I was lucky that I and all around me were safe drivers.

For each of these concerns, the dedicated anti-car partisan can sacrifice and overcome. I do and have done so for a decade. But they are sacrifices because majority culture operates with the expectation of a car. I hope never to be the person who drives circles in a parking lot for 15 minutes to find the closest spot to the big box store entrance, but I might park my Mini in the back as a grab a couple of cases of this or that before I and whatever family I then  have head to the shore for the weekend.