Laura Bush has never had a firm grasp on reality.  Maybe this was a prerequisite to marrying a guy like George.  The latest People magazine has her defending his record with the words, "No one, including the president, always makes the right decisions."

You feel like gently taking her hand and saying, "Now, Laura, nobody used the word 'always.'  We're saying it would have been nice if George had been right more often than a OUIJA BOARD."

On Monday, though, Laura soared totally unmoored from earth when she told Jay Leno about a certain little incident in her past.

LAURA:  I was in a car accident when I was a senior in high school and one of my best friends was killed in the car accident. . . .

Now, anybody hearing this might think, oh, poor girl. Isn't that awful? However, if she'd phrased it slightly differently, some of that sympathy might dissipate.

LAURA:  I caused a car accident when I was a senior in high school and I killed one of my best friends.

Got that? It's just a slight semantic difference, but it totally changes the impact. Like if the cops accuse you of indecent exposure, instead of saying, "Okay, I was horny, and I whipped it out," you say, "Well, it's possible penises were shown."

Jay says he first learned about the accident from her new book, but oddly doesn't require more details. Instead he wants to say how strong she must be to deal with the pain of killing somebody.

JAY:  Right, because I know you talk about it in the book, about just dealing with it, and I think it's helpful to other people who have been in similar situations.  I mean, you talk to --  You know, it was a different time, and I remember being a kid, and nowadays they have psychologists at school, and people that help kids overcome these kind of things, but there wasn't that then.  I know --

On TV these words go by very quickly, but when you take the time to read them the idiocy sinks in. "Overcome these kind of things"? Does he really mean murder? His first thought when he hears she killed somebody is, "Oh, I do hope the poor dear wasn't too scarred by the trauma"?

Laura buys right into Jay's train of thought.

LAURA:  No, and no one ever suggested that, you know, I talk to anyone or get any sort of help.  Later, when George was president, I got a lot of letters from, you know, parents or aunts and uncles or teachers of young people who'd been in an accident, and they asked me to write some words of encouragement to the young person, and usually I would write and say for them to talk to a counselor or a pastor or someone for some sort of encouragement, but I didn't do that.  And it just was never really suggested in 1963 in West Texas; people didn't -- really what you did was you just swallowed your troubles and didn't talk about it.

Laura uses the word "encouragement" twice here, which confuses me. It makes me wonder exactly what was in those letters:

Dear Ms. Bush:

My granddaughter Tiffany was texting while she was driving, and she ran a stop sign and flattened a Mexican family.  I know you did something like that.  Is there something you could say to encourage her?

Love ya lots,
Cecelia Hogsworth

Am I right?  Victims of accidents wouldn't write to her: it wouldn't make sense. You wouldn't stand at the bedside of an accident victim and tell them, "Hey, maybe you should write to Laura Bush, because she T-boned somebody once." It'd be like telling someone whose boyfriend was oddly controlling to get in touch with Charles Manson.

By the interview's end, we're feeling as ditzy as Laura. These must have been awfully trying times she and Jay lived in. I mean, just picture it. You crashed a car, or burned down a building, or killed somebody, and people just pretended it didn't happen! Thank God we've got support services these days, so while you're trying to forget all about that annoying little foible, there's trained personnel who will find you a hot towel, or cocoa, or a masseuse.