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Illustration from an article on how to tell if you’re a jerk. When I saw that image I had a sudden vivid memory from my teenage years, when I worked for a B. Dalton Bookseller in my home town of Birmingham — an experience I wrote about here. One very busy, but also rainy, Saturday at the height of the Christmas rush, my co-worker Morris Styles and I left the mall for lunch and went to a nearby Mexican restaurant. When we returned we couldn’t find a decent parking place and had to park in an auxiliary lot a long, long walk from the mall. As we trudged back in the rain we came across a car — I believe it was a pimped-out Camaro — parked like the one above, except it covered at least three spots. Morris paused to contemplate it. Then he bent down to unscrew the caps on the valve stems of the car’s tires, furled his umbrella so he could clearly see its pointed tip, and employed this improvised instrument to let every bit of air out of all four tires. Then he opened his umbrella again and we silently returned to the bookstore.
