Travelers checks are very impressive pieces of paper that are backed by the full faith and credit of actor Karl Malden. They are accepted at thousands of shopping locations around the world, although almost never the location that you personally are shopping in. Nevertheless, traveler’s checks are very popular with those travelers who have the brains of frozen vegetables. You’ve seen these people in those American Express traveler’s check commercials:

FIRST TRAVELER: Oh no!

SECOND TRAVELER: What’s wrong!

FIRST TRAVELER: I left my wallet unguarded on a cafe table here in the middle of this squalid, poverty-ridden, crime-infested foreign city, and now it’s gone!

SECOND TRAVELER: But that’s impossible!

KARL MALDEN (to camera): Hi, I’m Karl Malden.

FIRST TRAVELER: Look! It’s Raymond Burr!

KARL MALDEN: If you lose your American Express traveler’s checks, you can call for an immediate refund.

FIRST TRAVELER: But we don’t even know how to operate a telephone!

SECOND TRAVELER: I don’t even remember which Traveler I am! I think I’m the Second Traveler!

FIRST TRAVELER: No! I’m the Second Traveler!

KARL MALDEN (tO camera): American Express traveler’s checks. A lot of people never even figure out how to cash them.

You should definitely have a travel agent. Why go through all the hassle of dealing with airlines, hotels, and rental-car agencies yourself, only to see the arrangements get all screwed up, when with just a single phone call you can have a trained professional screw them up for you?

No, seriously, travel agents are wonderful. At least mine is. Her name is Ramona, and I’d literally be lost without her. I’ll be on a business trip, and I’ll wake up in a strange hotel room in bed with traces of minibar cheeses (At $127.50 per ounce) in my hair, and in a disoriented panic I’ll call Ramona, and we’ll have the following conversation:

ME: Where am I? RAMONA (checking her computer): You’re in Houston. ME (alarmed): Why? RAMONA: You’re on a business trip.

ME: Can I come home yet?

RAMONA (checking her computer): No. You have to go to Detroit.

ME (very alarmed): Detroit?

RAMONA (checking her computer): And get that cheese out of your hair.

I always do what Ramona says, because she has the computer. Ramona could ship me off to the Falkland Islands if she felt like it.

Ramona also is good at attempting to explain the airline fare system, which is governed by a powerful, state-of-the-art computer that somebody apparently spilled a pitcher of Hawaiian Punch into the brain of, and it has been insane ever since. I base this statement on the fact that if I fly from Miami to, for example, Tampa, the round-trip fare is often hundreds of dollars more than what it costs to fly from Miami to, say, Singapore. This makes no sense. Singapore is in a completely different continent (Possibly Africa), whereas Tampa is so close to Miami that our stray bullets frequently land there. And what is worse, there is never just one fare to Tampa. There are dozens of them, and they are constantly mutating. and the more Ramona explains them to me, the more disoriented I become.

ME: I need to go to Tampa on Thursday.

RAMONA (checking her computer): No, not Thursday.

ME: No?

RAMONA: No, because there’s a $600 penalty if you fly on a Thursday during a month whose name contains two or more vowels following two straight quarters of increased unemployment unless you are a joint taxpayer filing singly with two or more men on base provided that you spend at least one Saturday night in a hotel room within twelve feet of a malfunctioning ice machine and you undergo a ritual initiation ceremony wherein airline ticket agents dance around you and put honey-roasted peanuts up your nose. me: Book me on the Singapore flight.

Renting a car offers many attractive advantages to the traveler: independence, convenience, dependability, and a sudden, massive lowering of the IQ. I know what I’m talking about here. I live in Miami, and every winter we have a huge infestation of rental-car drivers, who come down here seeking warm weather and the opportunity to make sudden left turns without signaling across six lanes of traffic into convenience stores (No, not into the parking lots. Into the stores). My wife and I have affectionately nicknamed these people “Alamos,” because so many of them seem to rent their cars from Alamo, which evidently requires that every driver leave several major brain lobes as a deposit. We’ll be driving along, and the driver in front of us will engage in some maneuver that is boneheaded even by the standards of Miami (official motoring motto: “Death Before Yielding”), and we’ll shout, “Look out! Alamos!” We’re tempted to stay off the highways altogether during tourist season, just stockpile food and spend the entire winter huddled in our bedrooms, but we’re not sure we’d be safe there.

Not that I feel superior to the Alamos. I’ve rented many cars myself, and I have to admit that as soon as I get behind the wheel, I go into Bozo Mode. For one thing, I am instantly lost, and the only guidance I have is the rental-car-agency map, the sole function of which apparently is to show you the location of the rental-car agency. So I’m disoriented, plus I’m constantly trying to adjust the mirrors, seat, air conditioning, steering wheel, etc., plus—this is the most important part—I have to find a good radio station. This means I am devoting only about 2 percent of my brain to actually driving the car. And thus I—a person who tends to be extremely critical of other people’s driving—am transformed into an Alamo, drifting along at 27 miles per hour in the left lane of the interstate, with my left blinker on, trying to locate the FM button. Maybe, as a warning to other drivers, the federal government should require that all rental cars must have giant orange question marks sticking up out of their roofs.

The car-rental industry is extremely competitive, and often you can find some really good “deals” by keeping your eyes “peeled” for advertisements that look like this:

Why Pay More? Rent a Car for Just $3.99 a Week!! Including Unlimited Mileage!! Big Bob’s Car Rental & Miniature Golf & Full-Body Massage

Certain restrictions apply to this offer, such as to get the actual car you have to ride our “Courtesy Van,” which runs only during Lent, from the airport to our rental facility, which is in the Soviet Union, where you will have to wait in line behind people who have been there since the Ford administration because our rental fleet consists of a 1971 Plymouth Valiant with a tendency to catch fire, so we definitely recommend the insurance.

As a “smart shopper,” you will definitely save “big money” by taking advantage of bargains such as these, although you should of course insist that the agency person explain the terms of the rental agreement before you sign it:

You: What does this mean?

AGENCY PERSON: What does what mean?

YOU: This part here, where it says, “Renter agrees that we get to keep his house.”

AGENCY PERSON: Oh, that. Nothing. You (relieved): Whew.