My car battery died in a grocery store parking lot at 8:00 PM. I was standing there staring into the hood like a man trying to read a broken clock. A faded pickup truck pulled up. A guy in grease-stained overalls stepped out, took one look at my open hood, and nodded once without asking a single question. He reached into his truck bed and pulled out a pair of jumper cables so absurdly thick they looked like python snakes. He clipped red to red, black to black, gave my engine a small, reassuring tap, and said, "Turn it over, brother." It roared to life on the first try. I pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and offered it to him. He looked at the money, then at me with gentle confusion, as if I had just offered to buy his favorite hat. "I don't want your cash, man," he said, wrapping the heavy cables around his arm. "Buy your own set and keep them in the trunk. Someday it's your turn." That night, I went to Walmart and bought a set of cables so thick they take up a third of my trunk. Last Thursday, a young driver was standing helplessly near a dead car outside a gas station. I pulled up, rolled down my window, and didn't even ask what was wrong. "Pop the latch, my friend," I said. He tried to give me ten dollars afterward. I held up my hand, smiled, and told him what had been told to me: "Buy your own set, man. It's your turn next." America has no government department for dead batteries. It just has two hundred million working men waiting in the dark to hand off a pair of heavy copper cables.

In Japan, if you use a word wrong, someone will quietly teach you the correct one. In Texas, I thanked a mechanic by saying "you are a good man of the trucks." He did not correct me. He put it on his voicemail. "You've reached Ray. Good man of the trucks." His son answers the phone that way now.

NYILATKOZAT: Épp mindennap ott voltam az edzőteremben. Sajnos végig kellett hallgatnom, ahogy egy – legyünk őszinték – testesebb nőt egy testépítő-leendő olyan kegyetlenül sérteget a súlya miatt, hogy végül elhagyta az edzőtermet. Szembesültem ezzel a sovány fickóval – mígnem engem is kirúgtak az edzőteremből; kiderült, hogy a menedzser testvére volt. Szerencsére 20 másik budapesti edzőteremnek vagyok a tagja. Ha a nő ezt olvassa, kérlek, vedd fel vele a kapcsolatot DM-ben. TILOS A TESTSZÉGYENÍTÉS – lehet, hogy ez a nő összeszedte a bátorságát, hogy először elmenjen az edzőterembe, csak hogy aztán valami idióta megsértse.

Normalize repealing the Civil Rights Act.