P.J. O'Rourke's retrospective buzzkill

If you read P.J. O'Rourke's well known paean to the joys of teenage insanity (aka "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink"), you probably want to stop after reading Part 1 of Sobering Up Behind the Wheel:

"Part 1" above was published in the National Lampoon in 1978 or '79 when I was half my age. To not despise yourself when you were a twerp of 31 requires a more philosophical mind than this old fart possesses. The more so when that twerp was right. And he — that is, I — was right, especially about getting married, having a family, the mortgage, the liver, and the Country Squire (or, as it turned out, the SUV). Of course I didn't marry the teenage lovely in the tube top.

(Gosh, tube tops . . . As Alzheimer's creeps upon me, please God, let that be the last memory I lose.) True love and common sense intervened to make sure that I gained a beautiful spouse who can read and write and stuff and who does not want to drive from Boston to Mexico without stopping at several Ritz-Carltons. The other reason I didn't wed the teenage lovely in the tube top was that she didn't exist. I mean, she existed. I saw her every day on the summer streets of New York. But she didn't see me. I was dweeby, Brooks Brothers-clad, and invisible to her ilk. And so I have remained these thirty years. All for the best, I suppose.